


Brokeback Derry

by Amuly



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Blow Jobs, Bottom Eddie Kaspbrak, Bottom Richie Tozier, Canonical Character Death, Closeted Character, Coming In Pants, Condoms, Cowgirl Position, Crying, Crying Richie Tozier, Diabetes, Dirty Talk, Doggy Style, Dry Humping, Eventual Happy Ending, Fingerfucking, First Kiss, First Time, First Time Bottoming, Floor Sex, Frottage, Homophobic Language, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Missionary Position, Panic Attacks, Rimming, Sad with a Happy Ending, Sixty-Nineing, Top Eddie Kaspbrak, Top Richie Tozier, Virginity, Wall Sex, discussion of suicide, the character death is sonia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:41:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 87,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22964812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amuly/pseuds/Amuly
Summary: When he's twenty-four, Richie returns to Derry for a funeral. And suddenly heremembers. He calls Eddie to join him and help confirm that he's not crazy. Together they contrive a way to bring themselves back to Derry, and each other, as often as they can. Derry becomes their secret get-away, where they can be themselves again, even if it's just for a few weeks a year.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 337
Kudos: 538





	1. 2000, Age 24

**Author's Note:**

> I'll add tags as the fic progresses, but by the 2nd chapter things are explicit, hence the rating already being explicit although nothing happens this chapter.

His mom had died a few years before, and now her sister was the next one to go. Richie had never been especially close to his aunt, but something about the deaths back-to-back—and both breast cancer, what the fuck—ignited a sense of familial obligation in Richie. When he got the notice from Derry, something in him compelled him to scrape together what little cash he had on hand and get himself back to his hometown. He felt like he owed it to his mom, or something.

Richie could have pinpointed the second the Greyhound bus crossed into the Derry city limits, even if he hadn’t been sitting with his forehead pressed to the window, watching the sign whip pass them on the side of the highway. Everything came rushing back, children’s screams pounded the inside of his skull, and Richie found himself scrambling for the front of the bus to puke his fucking guts out.

The driver wouldn’t let him back on—thought he was a junkie or something. Luckily Derry wasn’t exactly a big town. So Richie threw his duffle bag across his back and began the short walk the rest of the way into town. With every step another memory flooded his mind, leaving Richie weaker and shakier with every one.

_Beep beep, Richie._

_I’m not your fucking boyfriend_

_Do_ not _fucking touch me!_

_Want a kiss, Richie?_

_G-g-g-eorgie-_

_Richie!_

It was dark by the time Richie made it to the Derry Inn. His feet were fucking killing him—his worn-through Converses weren’t exactly made for hiking along the side of I-95, in the dark. By the time he made it to his room he was too tired to even bother getting undressed. He locked the door, kicked his shoes off, and collapsed into the bed, mattresses squeaking beneath him.

The next morning Richie stared out the window of his room, running his tongue over his teeth as he thought and thought and fucking thought. And _remembered_.

He remembered _everything_.

The Losers. Big Bill. Little Georgie, poor Georgie, with his arm ripped right out of his body, bled out in the streets. Fucking Pennywise the clown. Stan, Bev. Eddie.

That he was fucking gay as a maypole for Eddie. Note to self.

He’d kinda… figured. In his one semester of college, and fucking around at various jobs waiting tables and scrubbing dishes, catching random open mic gigs when he could, there’d been… He’d sort of had a feeling. But he’d been able to ignore it for the most part, since no one was offering and Richie was barely able to keep himself fed, much less think about going to clubs and hooking up, or whatever guys like him did.

But what the fuck was he supposed to _do_ , now? Apparently leaving Derry made him _forget_ , somehow. Had everyone else forgotten? Must have. Had everyone else left? Bill had, in high school. Bev and Ben, too. Stan, Eddie, and Mike stuck with him through it, but they’d scattered to the four winds with college, hadn’t they? Eddie and Stan had, at least. Mike… no, Mike had gone, he’d gotten into the commuter school, just outside Derry.

Should he call them? Look them up, tell them to come back?

He wanted to call Stan. Stan always knew what to do.

An overwhelming sense of unease overtook Richie. He couldn’t even call it something as mild as a hunch; no, it was a certainty. An absolute assurance that if he called Stan, something terrible would happen. Bile rose to the back of Richie’s throat and he swallowed it down, face breaking out into cold fear-sweat.

He couldn’t call Stan. Whatever he did, he couldn’t. Not right now, at least. Not until he figured out more.

Who else, then? His first thought was Bill, because it was Bill’s brother that brought them together that summer, and Bill’s promise that still tied them together, if the scar on Richie’s hand that reappeared when he drove over the Derry county line was anything to go by. But after Stan didn’t come Bill—not in Richie’s mind, not in Richie’s intuition. It wasn’t Stan, then Bill. Bill was the next logical choice, sure: if Richie was thinking with is head. But what good did _that_ ever do him?

It was Stan, then Eddie. In Richie’s gut, in all his instincts. If he couldn’t call Stan—he couldn’t, he couldn’t, something terrible would happen if he did—then it was Eddie. It could be no one else but Eddie.

But how the hell would he even find him? Surely Eddie didn’t live in Derry anymore, though Richie supposed he could try that first. At least “Kaspbrak” was a unique enough name. Even if he had to call every county directory in the country, he shouldn’t get too many false positives along the way.

Richie brewed himself some mid-grade instant coffee in the Derry Inn’s kitchenette, settling in at a table with the phone, a notebook, pencil, and a newspaper (because this was going to get boring, depending how far afield Eddie had gone, so at least Richie could do the crossword or wordels as he worked).

It didn’t take long to figure out Eddie was not still in Derry. But, by some damned miracle, he had an aunt Kaspbrak who still was (thank fuck for Derry aunts, Richie supposed). She was able to give Richie Sonia’s number in, shocker of shockers, New York. Richie wondered what the hell Sonia was doing in New York, but dialed the number.

“ _Sonia Kaspbrak speaking, may I ask who is calling?_ ”

Richie shuddered. He remembered that voice.

He also remembered he would have to play this cool. Sonia didn’t like letting Eddie out to play with the other boys.

“This is Robert Trenton,” Richie said, spilling out the first name he could make up on the spot. He kept his voice blandly formal. “May I please speak with Edward Kaspbrak?”

“ _What is this in regard to_?”

Shit, shit. Richie should have done more research.

“Work.”

Richie shoved the phone between his shoulder and ear and crossed his fingers on both hands. Come on, Sonia. Your baby boy was a big important businessman. Surely you wanted him to succeed…

“ _Eddie! Phone!_ ”

Richie shuddered. That screech. He remembered that screech.

“ _Edward Kaspbrak speaking_.”

Richie had been leaning back in his chair, balanced on the back two feet of it. He dropped down now, heart going _thud_ in his chest in time with the chair’s _thud_ on the old wood floors of the Derry Inn. Richie clutched the phone to his ear with both hands, heart pounding a mile a minute in his chest.

“Mr. Kaspbrak,” he managed to say, because Richie remembered. Remembered how Sonia was. “I’m sorry, this is extremely sensitive information. Could you please confirm when you are alone and the only one on the line?”

Richie could hear Eddie hesitating on the other end of the line. His heart broke, knowing that Eddie was looking at his mother, that he was debating the pros and cons of merely having a _private conversation_ out of Sonia’s clawing grasp. His heart broke, but it also flamed, righteous anger rising in him. This fucking clown magic had _taken_ Eddie’s bravery from himself. He’d stood up to his mother, that summer. He’d realized how sick she was, that he was braver, stronger, better than she ever let him be. And then they’d all forgotten, as soon as they left town. Fucking clown.

“ _Alright, go ahead_ ,” Eddie’s voice was saying. Richie shook himself and refocused.

“I’m sorry, but this is very confidential information. Are you most definitely alone?”

A pause. Finally: “ _Yes_.”

“Eddie. It’s Richie Tozier. From Derry. I need you to come back, man. I need you to come see me.”

“ _Richie… Tozier. …_ Richie.”

“Yeah, remember me? Eds?”

“ _Don’t call me Eds_ …”

Richie bit back a sob. He blinked tears from his eyes.

“Yeah, that’s it. You’re Eddie Spaghetti, and I’m Richie Trashmouth. _Beep beep, Richie_. You remember?”

“Holy shi- heck. I forgot.”

“We all forgot,” Richie rushed to reassure him. “I forgot. I’m in town for a funeral, and something happens when you come back, Eddie. You remember. Can you come back? I need someone to remember with me. Tell me I’m not losing my entire fucking mind.”

“Yes, of course.” Eddie’s tone was different. Formal. Richie thought he had an idea what was going on. “That sounds like an incredible opportunity. When do you need me by?”

“As soon as you can. I can’t stay here forever.” Panic seized Richie’s throat. Was he going to forget again when he left? Could they stop it? He needed Eddie here, he needed someone to bounce ideas off of.

“Absolutely, I’ll be on the first flight tomorrow morning,” Eddie continued in his work-pleasant voice. Sonia must have come in the room or was outside the door, listening. Richie clutched the phone to his ear.

“I’m staying at the Derry Inn,” he told Eddie.

“Fantastic. See you tomorrow.”

And then Eddie hung up.

Richie held the phone and stared at it, heart beating out of his chest, panting like he’d just run a mile.

Then he ran to the nearest trashcan and threw up.

* * *

Richie’s leg jiggled under the table in the common space of the Derry Inn. He’d had five cups of coffee just sitting around waiting for Eddie, and not a thing to eat (like he could afford it—the coffee was free, at least), but it would probably be jiggling uncontrollably with or without the caffeine.

He had no idea when Eddie was supposed to be getting in. He’d just said “first flight out.” That could mean anything. But Richie didn’t know what else he was supposed to do with himself, besides wait for Eddie. Richie’s hands folded and refolded the newspaper on the table, eyes fixed on the door to the Inn. He was it with a wave of déjà vu. He had spent a lot of time, especially in high school, just waiting around for Eddie.

At two o’clock the door to the Inn opened. Richie jumped up so fast that his vision tunneled, and he stumbled as he tried to round the table. It ended up with him tripping over his own feet and falling into Eddie’s arms.

“Uh. Hey Eddie.”

Eddie stared down at the armful of Richie Tozier he was now burdened with.

God, he looked the same. Except taller.

Not much, though.

“You’re still a fucking disaster then?”

“You’re still living with your mother, then?” Richie pointed out, pushing himself up out of Eddie’s arms. Eddie frowned and stamped his foot.

“It’s fiscally responsible; there’s no reason for me to move out-”

Richie grabbed Eddie’s shoulders and shook him lightly.

“Eds, I fucking love you, and I don’t even want to argue right now because I’m so fucking relieved to see you.”

Eddie stopped, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. After a long moment he sucked in a breath, eyes doing that big doe-eyed thing that Richie fell in love with a decade ago.

“God, Richie, I love you, too.”

They grabbed each other into a manful hug that definitely hid some less-than-manful sniffling and tears. When they finally pulled apart Richie nodded up the stairs.

“C’mon. Let’s drop your shit off-” Richie looked down and suddenly realized Eddie was hauling no less than _two_ suitcases with him. “What the fuck, Eddie: how long did you think you were coming for?”

“I don’t know!” Eddie whined. Richie grabbed one of the suitcases and helped Eddie up to their room. “You called and suddenly it was like, oh fucking shit, I remembered you, I had _forgot_ you and now I _remembered_ , and I didn’t know what the _fuck_ was going on so, you know, I just grabbed… everything.”

They dropped Eddie’s two massive suitcases off in Richie’s room, then stood there staring at each other in awkward silence.

Richie had to break that silence, because that was his job. It was in the name.

“Guess you finally went through puberty, huh Eds?”

“Don’t fucking call me Eds,” Eddie snapped. His hair was gelled back within an inch of its life and Richie found he hated it. It made Eddie look too hard, and old. Like a grown-up.

“Did you go to college?” Richie asked, in spite of himself.

Eddie nodded. “Yeah. Got a business degree.”

“Fucking stupid.”

“Yeah well what’d you get a degree in, asshole?”

“Oh your mom didn’t tell you? I’m an OBGYN, every night.”

Eddie’s face screwed up and Richie could just kiss it. He’d missed that angry little chipmunk face. He hadn’t remembered it, and somehow he had missed it. How was that even possible?

“Fuck you, Richie! That’s not even funny, you asswipe!”

Probably because Richie was so _relieved_ by how Eddie was here, how normal everything was between them in spite of crazy Derry magic amnesia, Richie’s stomach chose that moment to growl loudly. Right: he hadn’t eaten since sometime yesterday. And he’d done a lot of puking.

“Wanna grab some pancakes at the diner?”

“It’s like two-thirty,” Eddie pointed out, glancing at his watch after he said it.

Richie slung his arm around Eddie’s shoulders and steered him out of their room.

“Eddie, my dear: I don’t give a damn.”

They dug into a stack of pancakes bigger than Eddie’s head (but not Richie’s, because you’d need a crane to lift in a stack of pancakes that could stack higher than his unfortunate five-head). Richie kept staring at Eddie, looking him all over like his eyes were his hands and he was just poking Eddie to make sure he was really there. Eddie, for his part, kept trying to sneak glances at Richie only to find him looking and skittering his eyes away.

“So are we going to call everyone else?” Eddie asked, starting Richie out of his contemplation of the little frown line that Eddie had developed between his eyebrows in the time they’d been apart. They were only twenty-four; Eddie shouldn’t have wrinkles yet. He was worrying too much.

“I dunno,” Richie said, slowly. Because he’d been thinking about this, ever since he called Eddie. He had to call _someone_ , at first. He needed a second person trapped in this insane unreality with him, just to confirm it was real, that he hadn’t finally cracked. But now that Eddie had done that for him, Richie wasn’t sure how he felt about calling the rest of the Losers.

And he definitely knew how he felt about calling one of them.

“We shouldn’t call Stan,” Richie said. He met Eddie’s eyes. “I dunno why. He was the first one I wanted to call-”

“Thanks.”

“-don’t mention it. But, I dunno. I got a feeling, you know? Something. Like if I call him something bad’ll happen.”

Eddie bit his lip, that little wrinkle between his eyebrows deepening. Richie wanted to smooth it away with his thumb.

“Well what about anyone else? Shouldn’t we call Bill, at least?”

Richie shrugged. “But like, why, dude?”

Eddie frowned. “Because…”

Richie held out his hands, waiting for Eddie to answer. “Yeah, see? I mean, Pennywise ain’t around anywhere, right?”

Eddie gripped the table with both hands, wheezing slightly. “Don’t- Richie-”

“But he’s not!”

Eddie’s eyes slid away from Richie’s, goggling out at the diner. Everyone seemed… normal. Or, normal enough, for Derry.

“Yeah, but we _forgot_ , Richie. That’s gotta mean something.”

Riichie winced. Because yeah, he’d thought of that, too.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. But he’s not eating kids right now, right? Like, okay, maybe there’s still some magic floating around, but dude’s probably in a coma! Or a cocoon or something, healing up. We probably got a thousand years before he fixes himself up from the thrashing we gave him.”

“Maybe…” Eddie didn’t seem convinced. But he agreed with Richie’s assessment: there was no reason to call the rest of the Losers, because there wasn’t any crisis to call them _to_.

They walked through the town that evening, kicking pebbles and bumping shoulders. Richie kept stealing glances over at Eddie, wondering at how easy this felt. How totally not-scary. Maybe it was because they were adults now, and the threat of schoolyard bullies—or monsters hiding in the sewers—seemed so much smaller. Maybe it was just because Richie could remember killing a monster clown as a pre-teen. And remembered how brave the boy walking next to him had been.

“So do you think we’re gonna forget again? As soon as we leave?” Eddie asked.

Richie’s chest tightened, and he found himself rubbing at it, trying to press the feeling out of him. His eyes felt hot.

“Fuck, Eds.”

“We’re gonna, aren’t we?” Eddie observed, voice cracking slightly in the barest hint of panic. “As soon as we get on the bus, or the plane, and cross over the city limits again, we’re going to forget.” Eddie stopped and turned, grabbing Richie’s arm. Richie realized they were on the kissing bridge. Eddie shook him. “I don’t want to forget again, Richie. I can’t forget again!”

“We could stay here,” Richie breathed. He was only brave because it was Eddie, and Eddie was the bravest person he knew. “We could get a place-” _Careful, careful Richie_ \- “Like an apartment, go halvies on the rent. Roommates. Get jobs in town. I could work at the movie theater. Then we wouldn’t forget.”

Eddie’s eyes dropped, and his hand followed soon after. Richie’s arm was hot where Eddie had been gripping it too-tightly, and now it cooled rapidly, painfully, in the late-September air.

“I can’t,” Eddie whispered. “I…”

“What? You can quit your job,” Richie pleaded, even though he knew this was all a fantasy. One he’d had plenty of times as a kid: drive away with Eddie, get a place together, be roommates. Live a life with Eddie, even if you never touched, because Eddie wouldn’t ever want to touch him, not that way. But they could have a place, they could share a kitchen, a bathroom. They could go grocery shopping together, read the paper over coffee in the morning, argue about what movie to see on weekends.

 _Beep beep, Richie_.

“It’s my mom,” Eddie whispered. He looked at Richie with those big doe eyes. Richie wanted to die. “I forgot. I forgot about the gazebos. Placebos. I forgot.”

“But you remember now,” Richie pointed out. “You could stay here. Not go back.” _Not go back to her_.

“I have to,” Eddie whispered. “Oh, no, Richie. I have to go back to her.” Eddie’s breath grew shallow and he grabbed at Richie’s arm. “Richie! I… I don’t want to go back to her, I don’t- she…”

Richie grabbed Eddie and pulled him into a hug, holding Eddie tight to his chest. Eddie sobbed brokenly, breath coming to fast, panic shaking his entire body. Richie hushed him, stroking his hand over the back of Eddie’s head and trying not to think about how much he had wanted this, Eddie trembling in his arms. Pushed away the thoughts that even though this was all wrong, some terrible, selfish part of Richie still loved it.

_You’re a dirty boy, Richie. Wanting to touch the other boys like this. Wanting Eddie to be hurt so you can do this. You’re sick, Richie. Sick like Eddie’s mother. Sicker._

“What if we bring ourselves back?”

Eddie pushed himself up from Richie’s chest, peering up at him through tears.

Richie never wanted to see Eddie cry ever again. Richie wanted to wipe those tears from Eddie’s cheek and kiss him better. Richie shoved down all those feelings because they had bigger problems than Richie’s stupid feelings.

“What do you mean?”

“What if we… we can figure out a way. To bring us back here in a few months. And then you’ll have time to plan it. So you can get away for a week. Take a vacation.”

Eddie laughed into a sniff, wiping at his eyes. He was pulling back from Richie now, and Richie had to let him or Eddie would notice. He tamped down the sick feelings of disappointment as his arms dropped from around Eddie’s back.

“How could we do that?”

“Well, you could call work right now, from Derry. Before you forget,” Richie thought out loud. He was quick on his feet, at least. “Schedule a vacation for like, six months from now. And then put it in your calendar. So you’ve got the time already planned. You won’t remember you do, but you will.”

“But how do we bring ourselves back?”

Richie chewed at his lip. Yeah, that was the part he was a little lost on.

But Eddie was thinking with Richie now. As his tears dried his mind started to work. And the only person who could ever keep up with Richie was Eds.

“What if we sent ourselves letters?”

“But we’d get them too soon,” Richie pointed out. “I think we’d forget, if we tried to hold onto the letters for six months.”

But Eddie was shaking his head. “No, I mean, we send them in six months. You can have a lawyer do that. Maybe the post office, even.”

“Like some sort of secret spy shit? Is that real?”

“I think so,” Eddie speculated. “We can find out.”

“So we write ourselves letters.”

“In our own handwriting, so we know it’s real,” Eddie continued. “And it tells us to come to Derry on the dates we pick. And then we’ll come here and we’ll remember.”

“You can tell your mom now about this ‘work trip,’” Richie said. “And then she’ll let you go. For a week.”

“We could spend a week together,” Eddie agreed. And the way he said it, and the way he was staring up at Richie, like he was… breathless. Like his eyes were sparkling.

Richie shoved his hands in his pockets and hurried onward, long legs taking them swiftly away from the kissing bridge. Eddie scurried alongside him, having to walk double-time to keep up. It made Richie feel like an awkward giant, and he hunched his shoulders more than usual, trying to bring himself down to Eddie’s level.

“Let’s get this shit done so we can at least have one night together,” Richie said. He spluttered as soon as the words left his mouth, choking over his own burning _want_ that had to seem so obvious, like a neon pink triangle pointed at Richie’s head.

But Eddie was nodding excitedly at Richie’s side, not noticing the flub. “Yeah, Richie.”

They ended up spending the night in Richie’s room in the Inn—which was their room, now, since Eddie hadn’t bothered to book his own room. They sat on the bed facing each other after they finished their letters and dropped them off with the post office, to be delivered in a little less than six months to their current addresses. Richie just hoped he wouldn’t move before then. Eddie wouldn’t, and if the letters worked on at least one of them, they could always get the other to Derry the same way Richie had lured Eddie here this time. It was a solid plan.

But they didn’t sleep a minute that night, because they both knew this might be the last time they see each other. Again.

That morning Eddie had to go first, he had to get into a cab and head for the airport. They were tired, lolling against each other on the bed, eating snacks and shoulders brushing, neither willing to start saying their goodbyes, minutes ticking closer and closer.

Eddie started to get up, to pack, to brush his teeth, wash his face. He was in the bathroom and Richie was almost-dozing on the bed when Richie heard him, sobbing through the half-closed door. Richie sprang up, Eddie crying like his own personal alarm system. He slammed the door open and there was Eddie, toothbrush in hand and bawling his eyes out. The toothbrush was shaking hard, his whole body was trembling violently. Richie grabbed him as the toothbrush fell out of his hand and into the sink and wrapped him up in his arms. At least all that stupid _bigness_ that Richie had somehow grown up into was good for something.

“I can’t go back, I can’t go back,” Eddie moaned. “I can’t go back to her, I’m going to go back to her I’m going to forget she’s going to make me think I’m so sick and small and I’m going to forget I was ever brave, Richie, she’s going to make me sick again and I can’t forget you I can’t-”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Richie hushed. Inside he was panicking, but two of them couldn’t lose their entire minds right now, so it was down to Richie to be calm, apparently. Richie did not think he was actually capable of that but he tried. “We got a plan, Eds. _Your_ plan! So it’s gonna work, right? Because you’re the college kid.”

“Shut up Richie you’re smarter than me you were always smarter than me.”

“Yeah exactly, and I’m saying your plan is awesome and totally gonna work, and you gotta trust me because I’m smarter than you.”

“I fucking hate you,” Eddie sobbed. But he was clinging to Richie, squeezing him so tight it was like Eddie thought he could squish them together, make them one inseparable person.

Richie tried not to think about how much he wanted exactly that.

“You’re so fucking smart, Eds,” Richie told him. “And you _are_ brave. This is like, the scariest thing in the fucking world, we’re knowingly walking into like, fucking oblivion, but you’re going to do it, I know you’re going to, because you’re _so_ brave. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met, Eddie. And you’re gonna keep being brave. Even if you don’t remember it, it’s in your bones, man.”

Eddie pulled back to look up at Richie, eyes wet, face splotchy and unattractive. Richie loved him with the desperation of a thirteen-year-old loving his first crush, even here, more than ten years later.

And then Eddie stood up on tip-toes and kissed Richie.

Richie kissed him back, immediately, because he couldn’t _not_. It was Eddie. It was _Eddie_. Richie kissed him back and grabbed his shirt and hauled Eddie in like they could get any closer, like their chests and stomachs and thighs weren’t all already pressed as tight as they could go, and now their mouths, Eddie’s _mouth_ on Richie’s, lips pressed firm… Richie slipped his tongue into Eddie’s mouth and Eddie just took it in, gasping as he opened his mouth to Richie. It was too wet and their mouths were open too wide but Richie kissed and kissed, body soaring, brain checked out a _long_ time ago.

Eddie broke the kiss first, he must have, because Richie didn’t think he ever could have himself. Richie gazed down at Eddie, lips spit-wet and gleaming, brain powered off so long ago there was no hope of him coming up with a follow-up to that. Was there a punchline? Richie couldn’t see one.

“I wanted to do that before I forget I’m brave. And because I don’t know if I’m ever going to get another chance.”

“We’re going to get another chance,” Richie replied, burning with conviction. He reached his hand up and cupped Eddie’s cheek. “We _will_. This’ll work, and in six months you can finish what you started, Kaspbrak.”

“If you say so, Tozier,” Eddie whispered. He still looked scared—terrified, out of his mind terrified—but there was a manic gleam in his eyes now. Like when he’d broken his arm, or split his lip. Like he knew what pain felt like and remembered he could survive it. Richie swept his thumb over Eddie’s cheekbone.

They had to separate. They had their plan. And they had their lives to go back to. Richie couldn’t remember exactly what he cared about enough in his own life right now that could ever convince him to leave Eddie behind, but he knew Eddie had his mother to return to. Nothing under heaven or on earth could change that, Richie knew.

“We’ll come back,” Richie promised Eddie when they were standing outside, Eddie waiting for the cab to take him to the airport. Eddie was looking at him with that manic light in his eye, but tinged heavily with fear. “I’ll come back to you.”

Eddie just stared at him, like he was trying to memorize every inch of him. Like he was trying to make himself _remember_ , to make it _stick_.

But Richie knew it wouldn’t. And as the Greyhound bus traveled past the Derry city limits, Richie slowly relaxed into the window, not sure why he had such a sad, hollow feeling in his chest, like his heart had just been ripped out and stomped on.

Must be the after-effects of that funeral he’d gone to. Funerals probably left you feeling this way. Like your insides had been scooped out and ice cold grave dirt stuffed in their place.


	2. 2001, Age 25

Eddie shook his inhaler and sucked down one puff, then two. He’d gotten here before Richie, but he told himself that didn’t mean anything. Richie was probably taking a Greyhound, and Eddie had flown in. That was all it was. 

It wasn’t because Eddie had kissed Richie the last time they had seen each other, and now Richie was disgusted by him. It wasn’t because Richie thought he was a sick faggot and was never going to come back again, because he never wanted to see Eddie’s pathetic, girly-boy face. 

Eddie puffed on his inhaler another time. He didn’t need it, he didn’t need it, but it still _worked_. His breath still constricted before he used it, and relaxed after he used it. It might be psychological, but that psychological cause had a very real physiological effect. He had thought knowing, remembering, would fix it all. But it didn’t. 

It was fucking _bullshit_ that it didn’t. Eddie’s grip tightened around his inhaler, plastic creaking softly in the quiet of the Derry Inn. He knew, he _remembered_. But he couldn’t stop the thoughts. Couldn’t stop _knowing_ that he was having an asthma attack, that Richie wasn’t coming because he was disgusted by Eddie’s filthy faggot kisses, or he was coming but the Greyhound crashed and he’d died, or the fucking clown was back and killed Richie, or was about to kill Eddie, or...

Eddie ran back up to his room and swallowed down half a Xanax. Not enough to get loopy, just. He needed to take the fucking edge off. He stared out the window of his room, shaking out his hands as he waited for the Xanax to kick in. He just needed to feel… okay. Just needed to not feel like he was about to climb up on top of the Inn, rip his shirt off, and _scream_.

After a few minutes Eddie stepped back out of his room, copy of the _Economist_ he’d picked up from an airport newsstand in hand as he prepared to resume his vigil. He got as far as the top of the stairs when he stopped.

Richie was standing there, one hand on the banister, looking up at him.

Eddie’s throat clicked. Was Richie mad? Was Richie disgusted by him? Was Richie going to let him down gently, to tell him it was okay, but Richie wasn’t like that, Richie didn’t feel that way, Richie had gone and gotten himself a fiancé in the meantime, Richie loved someone else-

Richie took the stairs two at a time, giant stupid legs at last being put to good use. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder, bouncing with his strides. When he reached the top, Eddie didn’t have time to panic, for once in his life, because Richie was staring down at him in such a _way_. His eyes were dark, his lips wet. Eddie gasped beneath him as Richie grabbed the front of his shirt and shoved Eddie back into the room he’d just come out of. As soon as the door slammed shut behind them Richie’s backpack fell to the floor and he was cupping Eddie’s face in his hands and kissing, kissing, kissing him.

“Eddie,” Richie whispered brokenly, even as he shoved Eddie backwards towards the bed.

Eddie, to his absolute fucking shame and he’d deny it when they were older, jumped up into Richie’s arms and wrapped his legs around Richie’s waist. His cock twitch when Richie grabbed hold of his ass with one arm and held him up, _easily_ , walking them backwards towards the bed. He had one hand still on Eddie’s cheek, whimper in his throat as he kissed him some more.

“I remember, I remember you,” Richie told him in between kisses, pressing the words into Eddie’s mouth. He set Eddie gently on the bed, curling his body on top of his. Richie peered down at Eddie from behind those coke-bottle glasses and blinked rapidly. “You remember me, right, Eds?”

Eddie nodded viciously, hands everywhere: running over Richie’s back, shoving up his shirt, combing through his hair. “I remember you. I remember you, Richie Tozier. I remember.”

Richie whimpered and pressed his face into Eddie’s neck, sucking lightly on the skin there. Eddie jerked, hips jolting up under Richie’s, and now he felt Richie’s erection slide up against his. It was the first time he’d ever felt that: another man’s erection. Richie whined, pressing his hips back down in answer. Eddie gasped, grabbing onto Richie’s back and holding tight. With a boldness he didn’t know he felt, Eddie jerked his hips up again, asking Richie, pressing against him, _come on, come on_.

It was like something snapped between them—if something hadn’t snapped long ago. Richie’s breathing was hot and wet against Eddie’s neck as his hips fell into a rhythm, snapping down against Eddie’s, pinning Eddie to the mattress as the bedframe shook beneath them. Eddie clung onto Richie and answered him as best he could, gasping into his hair, biting at his ear, pressing kisses to his temple, his forehead, anywhere he could reach. He shoved a hand under Richie’s shirt and scraped his fingernails over his ribs. Richie shuddered above him, entire body trembling.

They didn’t say a word, after they both confirmed that they remembered. Eddie was spiraling quickly, body tensing as Richie pressed his dick again and again into his. Eddie felt like he was hyperventilating, but in a way that made him want to suck on Richie’s tongue instead of his inhaler. He’d… He’d never done this, he-

Eddie cried out and spilled into his pants, unexpectedly. His head went fuzzy as he tensed and then relaxed beneath Richie, body juddering with every thrust of Richie’s hips. Above him Richie sped up until the bedframe was knocking into the plaster, _thump thump thump thumpthumpthump-_! And then Richie was biting down on the juncture between Eddie’s neck and shoulder, whimpering softly as his body stilled and then relaxed on top of Eddie’s.

Richie went boneless, noodling against Eddie’s body. He was too big and too heavy but Eddie gathered his arms up and wrapped them around Richie, running them over his back. He pushed his hands under Richie’s shirt so he could soothe lines over his skin. Richie was breathing hard into his neck. Eddie shushed him and pretend like he couldn’t hear the broken, tell-tale juddery pattern of Richie’s breaths.

They must have dozed off because Eddie woke up later, sunlight casting longer shadows in their room, Richie still wrapped around him like an octopus and only slid slightly off his side. Eddie shifted and immediately regretted letting himself doze off as his pubic hair pulled uncomfortably against dried come in his briefs. Eddie wrinkled his nose and slid out from under Richie as gently as he could.

When he came out of the bathroom a few minutes later Richie was sitting up in the bed, arms wrapped around a pillow he had tugged to his chest. He was watching Eddie warily, like he wasn’t sure what was going on. Eddie frowned and padded his way, barefoot, over to the bed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong. Besides giving myself a wax-job on my pubes; hope you like the pre-pubescent look Eddie my dear because it’s going to be smooth as a baby’s when I peel these jeans off.”

Eddie slid into bed, hands seeking Richie’s thighs, because something was _really_ wrong.

“Richie?”

Richie looked away, eyes skittering away behind his coke-bottle glasses. On instinct Eddie lifted his hand to Richie’s cheek and cupped it softly. Richie gasped and turned back, eyes wide.

“Did you… I mean…” Richie bit his lip and looked down. When he looked back up his eyes were wet. “Was it okay? You liked it?”

Eddie’s mouth opened in shock. “What?”

“I’m sorry, Eds, I got carried away-”

“Richie, what, I liked it. Of course I fucking liked it, I just finished scraping the jizz out of my underwear.”

“I called you here,” Richie pointed out. “I pulled you into this with me. I could have called Stan, or Bill, or anyone, but I dragged you into it. I’m sorry, Eddie.”

“No, fuck, no!” Eddie pulled his hand back from Richie’s cheek so he could _shove_ at him angrily. “No! I was only half a person, I didn’t remember who I was or who you were or anything and then you called me back, Richie! You called me back to who I _was_ , you made me remember that I was brave, and I…”

Eddie stumbled forward and kissed Richie, because there were so many _words_ but he couldn’t figure out how to make them _work_ , to convince Richie, to explain to him. So he shut up and put his mouth to better use and hoped Richie got the message.

* * *

They did hand stuff when they woke up that morning. He felt embarrassed, thinking of it as “hand stuff.” Hand jobs. Jerked each other off. Tickled each other’s pickles, he thought with a giggle, in a mental voice that sounded a lot like Richie’s. He was embarrassed by his own embarrassment, by his shyness over these simple sex acts with Richie, when they were twenty-five. He was twenty-five! He had a college degree, he had a job, he had gotten a _promotion_ last year and a Christmas bonus. He was about as adult as it got, and he still called it _hand stuff_ , like a high schooler.

But that was just it, wasn’t it? When other kids were figuring this shit out, in high school, Eddie wasn’t. Eddie was under the thumb of his mother, not going out or doing _hand stuff_. Not that he would have wanted to, anyway. Not with girls, at least.

He was twenty-five and he was just figuring out he was gay. Wasn’t that fucking pathetic? And the only reason he’d figured it out was because he’d been away from his mom and had the _chance_ to figure it out. Would he figure it out when they were separated again? When he was back with his mother? When he was that half-self, who forgot that he was brave, that his mother was making him sick, that his inhaler was just a placebo?

Eddie was afraid not. Was afraid for his half-self, living his half-life. But then Richie was snuffling at his neck, trying to kiss him into going another round, even though Eddie’s penis was tired and spent, even though Richie’s was, too. And Eddie laughed and shoved at him, even though his hand was gross and covered in come.

Eddie was embarrassed by how messy it was, and the noises they made together, but Richie had been making those noises too, and when it was _happening_ it didn’t feel messy, it felt _really_ good. And afterwards it didn’t feel messy either, not right away. It was only once he had showered and slid back into bed and Richie slung himself back on top of Eddie’s still-damp skin that the smell of sex and sweat became noticeable and Eddie started to blush.

“Richie. Richie get off, you stink.”

“You love my stink,” Richie giggled, tired and sex-punchy. Eddie snorted and shoved at him.

“Seriously, Richie. I’m clean: you’re getting me all dirty again.”

“I can get you dirty again,” Richie repeated, humping lightly against Eddie’s leg for emphasis.

It wasn’t an unappealing idea. Eddie bit his lip, soft penis stirring between his legs.

But was that all this was for? Meeting up, screwing each other’s brains out in Derry Inn twice a year? Eddie nudged at Richie, more gently but also more firmly, this time.

“Come on. Take a shower and we can eat.”

“I know what I want to eat,” Richie mumbled, smile on his lips, eyes closed. But it wasn’t with intent. Eddie turned his head and pressed a kiss to Richie’s hair.

What he didn’t want to say was he wanted to get up and walk around the town. With Richie, of course—not alone, not in this fucking town. But clearly Derry had some magic curse bullshit still hanging over it, with this amnesia situation that had fallen over all the Losers. Eddie needed to know: was It still alive? Was that why they had amnesia—some sort of dying, desperate defense mechanism, the last breath of strength that It had inside, reaching out to snatch the memories from the Losers heads so they wouldn’t come back, they wouldn’t _know_ to come back, and it could rest in the darkness, quietly rebuilding its strength until it was time to feed again.

Or was Derry just fucked from one end to the other, and clown-magic was just one of the many supernatural curses that hung over this blighted town?

Eddie had no interest in going monster hunting, but maybe him and Richie should try and figure that out. It would give them something to do in between bouts of sex, at least.

Eddie grinned and nuzzled his nose into Richie’s thick brown hair. He’d had _sex_. With _Richie_. And it had been _amazing_. It was with a sudden pang of bitterness that Eddie realized this is who he could have been in high school. If everyone hadn’t split, slowly but surely. Or college, maybe: if he hadn’t forgotten who he was. He could have been brave. He could have had these experiences, done these exciting, forbidden things, instead of being twenty-five and giggling over sex.

He couldn’t do anything about it. Or about It. _God grant me the serenity_ and all that bullshit. What he could do is live right now, hold tight onto what they had right now, move forward from right. now. And right now Richie stunk, and was pressing kisses to Eddie’s neck, and Eddie was shivering beneath him, and maybe his dick _was_ ready to get interested again.

Eventually Eddie managed to lure Richie into the shower, though maybe he ended up having to get in with him, and they made a whole mess again (but this time it cleaned up pretty easy). But then they were both finally dressed, and out of their room, because Richie’s stomach was growling _audibly_ and as much as Richie thought with his dick, he also thought with his stomach.

“We coulda just gotten room service,” Richie pointed out with an eyebrow waggle. They were walking down the main street, up towards a diner they both remembered now that they’d been in Derry almost twenty-four hours. It felt almost weird that they weren’t holding hands—on occasion their shoulders would brush and an electric shock would go through Eddie. But this was Derry, and they were two boys, and two boys didn’t walk down the street holding hands. Hell, you couldn’t get away with that shit in New York, unless you were really in the right neighborhood.

“I don’t think the Derry Inn provides room service,” Eddie snorted. He wrinkled his nose. “And I don’t think I’d trust it if it did.”

“You’re gonna trust Marty’s Diner more?”

Point. But they’d been eating there since they were kids and hadn’t died yet.

“What’s your life like?” Richie asked after, when they were just walking around the town, nothing else to do besides go back to the Inn and fuck some more. Eddie wondered if maybe they should go see a movie at the old theater, if it was still open and hadn’t been swallowed up by a nearby mall. If Richie would laugh him out of the Inn for suggesting it. But, nah, right? Earlier, when Richie had seen him, when they both knew they remembered…

“Earth to Eds, Earth to Eds, come in, captain, _she can’t take much more of this, captain-!_ ”

Eddie snorted and threw Richie’s arm off of his shoulder. “What?”

“Your life.” Richie nudged Eddie with his shoulder. “What’s it like? What do you do?”

“Oh.” Fuck, it felt a million miles away, didn’t it? Their lives, how they existed when they were only half-people.

“I’ve got a job with an insurance agency, actually? Working off commission, it sucks, it’s such a fucking grind. I think I got to quit, I’m not built for sales.”

Richie grinned, slow and long. “Yeah, I cannot see you charming clients. More likely to try to insult them into buying your shit and that only works with a very select group of people.”

“Like you, you mean.”

“Oh it’d definitely work on me, absolutely. But there’s not a lot of people like me, Eddie my dear.”

“Thank fuck,” Eddie commented.

“So if you hate sales why’d you do it?”

Eddie shrugged. “Got student loans to pay off. Mom to support.”

Richie shuddered. “Fuck, she was in your apartment, I remember now. She was around when I called you.”

Eddie bit his lip. “She lives there, Richie.”

Richie gagged. “That’s right, you _live_ with her. Fuck a duck, Eddie, how are you ever supposed to get laid living with your mommy?”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Clearly I just gotta fake a vacation I don’t remember planning and then send myself a letter six months in the future to lure myself to a town I don’t remember where my sluttiest friend will be waiting to screw my brains out.”

“I’m gonna tell Bev you think I’m sluttier than her.”

“You fucking are.”

“I’m only as much of a slut as you are, Eddie my love.”

He tried to cover it up with the jokey epithet at the end, but Eddie caught it. He wasn’t sure if he should say anything about it—Richie had said it so Eddie would know, but he also was carefully looking everywhere but Eddie. So Eddie kept his mouth shut and filed that fact away. And ignored the way it made his stomach flutter and cheeks warm.

“What about you?” Eddie asked, graciously changing the subject for Richie. “What do you do?”

“I just got a job at a radio station.” Richie shrugged one shoulder, shoved his hands in his pockets like he was embarrassed. “Shock jock shit, ya know. I’m not even the main host, I do like, assistant PA shit, but they let me bullshit with them sometimes on air, and I screen the calls and shit, pick the good ones, all that. I think they’re gonna give me a late-night gig—the old guy is retiring and… anyway. It’s all bullshit.”

“What? Why? That’s pretty good, Richie. It’s the sort of shit you wanted to do. Voices and gags.”

Richie slouched so low that he was practically the same height as Eddie.

“I… I go to open mics. Sometimes. Doing stand-up.”

“What and you don’t get booed off the stage? Chicago must be full of idiots.”

Richie grinned softly, spine straightening up an inch. “Well yeah your mother was there last week, so-”

“Richie? Eddie?”

They turned around as one, almost-familiar voice niggling at Eddie’s subconscious. Before he could quite figure it out there was a man in his arms, in both their arms, wrapping Eddie and Richie up together in a giant bear hug. Eddie was able to get enough of an impression that the man was taller than him, solid, black-

“Wait, Mike?”

Mike—holy shit, because it _was_ Mike, Mike Hanlon, all grown up! And _really_ handsome, wow, Eddie was completely besotted with Richie but he still had eyes, and Mike had grown up to be a total lady-killer—pulled back with a grin but didn’t release his hands from Richie and Eddie’s arms. He shook them lightly, then came back in for individual hugs: grabbing Richie first, and then when he was done with him going after Eddie. He hugged way too tight, and was all over the place jumping from one foot to the other, but Eddie was grinning when Mike pulled away at last.

“Mike! What are you doing here?”

“I live here. What are _you_ doing here? You guys remember me?”

“You _know_ ,” Eddie gaped. “You know about the memory thing?”

“How do _you_ guys know about the memory thing?” Mike countered. “How’d you come back?”

“It was an accident,” Richie offered. “I came back for a funeral and then I like, _remembered,_ man. And then I called Eddie.”

Mike looked a little confused at that part but was too excited to question it. Richie and Eddie liked each other, Richie and Eddie were friends. If Mike had been thinking clearly he would have asked why Richie didn’t call Stan, but clearly he was just so happy to see two of the Losers back in Derry, _any_ two, that he didn’t.

“You’re not…” Mike looked between them and Eddie thought _he knows_. He thought _he’s going to ask, he wants to know if we’re fucking_. But of course, Mike hadn’t been thinking anything like that, because why would he? “You’re not moving back, are you?”

The hope in his voice was heartbreaking. Richie and Eddie exchanged sympathetic looks.

“We’re vacationing,” Eddie said, for lack of a better way to put it. “We wrote letters to ourselves last time so we’d come back for a week, when we could get time off.”

“You’ve been here twice?” Mike asked. He looked between them. “Did you remember?”

Richie shook his head, mouth drawn in a thin line. “No. Second that Greyhound slips over the town line it’s like I was never fucking here. Like Eds never existed.” Richie’s voice cracked and he turned away. Eddie hurried to pick up the thread, to spare Richie the embarrassment.

“If you still live here, how do _you_ know about the memory thing?”

“Because of you guys,” Mike pointed out. “Every time one of you left, no matter how much you said you’d write or we’d talk on the phone, none of you did. I tried calling a couple times and your parents didn’t remember me. And then I went to college, but it was a commuter school so I never forgot, because I was coming back every day. So finally I stayed.”

“Why?” Richie asked the impolite question.

Mike glanced at him and didn’t answer. Instead he answered the question with a question: “How long are you guys in town for?” Mike asked.

“Until Sunday,” Eddie said.

“You guys want to come by my place for dinner?” Mike asked. “I can cook. Nothing fancy, but it’ll get the job done.”

They hugged, Mike holding on a little too tight and a little too long. Then they went their separate ways again, Richie and Eddie strolling back down towards Derry’s main strip. Eddie’s fingers brushed at Richie’s wrist.

“Hey… Wanna see what’s playing at the Aladdin?”

* * *

Mike had a house. A cozy house. It wasn’t anything fancy, but he had a job as the town librarian and now he had a house with a kitchen where he’d cooked Richie and Eddie dinner. It was like he was all grown up, or something.

Eddie thought about living with his mother—or his mother living with _him_ —in his half-world. Or the dream world. He felt more real here, with Richie, than he ever did in all the intervening years sleepwalking through his life. But could the “real world” be the place he only spent two weeks every year? Could he call the life he spent fifty weeks a year in the “dream world?” Who was he really? Who he was the majority of the time? Or who he was when he felt fully whole?

Whatever he called it, the life with his mother in New York felt decidedly less grown-up than Mike’s life here in Derry. Even though Eddie paid the rent on their apartment, and had a job, and put food on the table, and tended to his mother’s medical issues, it still felt like he was just a kid living with his mother. Her social security checks barely covered her prescription costs and Eddie provided for everything else, but somehow he felt like she was in charge. Maybe because she was: Eddie had never earned his independence with her, as his half-self. Or, he didn’t _remember_ fighting and winning his independence from her. So now his outside self was stuck: not yet fully a man, living an extended pubescence with his mother.

Eddie sat himself down at Mike’s kitchen table and swallowed down the resentment rising in his gullet.

“I can’t believe it worked,” Mike observed when they were done explaining.

Richie shrugged. “It was Eddie’s plan. It had to work.”

“Stop saying that,” Eddie snapped, embarrassed. “You were the one who said we should come back. Call off work ahead of time, set something up.”

“Yeah, but you figured out the letters,” Richie pointed out.

“Are you guys going to do it again?” Mike asked, obviously trying not to sound desperate but failing miserably.

Richie and Eddie glanced at each other. Richie licked his lips and Eddie’s brain went all staticy.

“Yeah,” Eddie said quickly, looking away. “Yeah. Now that we remember. We said we’d do this-” he wouldn’t look at Richie, “-as much as we could.”

“I could take off anytime, but I got no fucking money, and Chicago’s a fucking hike,” Richie observed.

“And I have money, but my vacation days are limited,” Eddie finished.

“We figure we got two weeks a year,” Richie grumbled, arms crossed.

But Mike was smiling like he knew something. Or had something figured out.

“I could do it,” he suggested.

“Do what?” Richie asked, stupidly. But Eddie had figured it out. Richie should have, too, but maybe he was distracted. He did keep looking over at Eddie like he wanted them to blow this popsicle stand and abandon poor Mike in favor of sucking each other’s dicks.

Which, uh. Eddie was _extremely_ into, but it was good to spend some time with Mike. Their dicks would still be there in a couple hours, ready to get sucked.

Okay, Eddie needed to stop thinking about sucking dicks.

“You want to call us back.”

“I, uh. I kind of thought I was going to have to, anyway. Eventually,” Mike admitted.

“What?”

Eddie wheezed. “You mean when It comes back? You were going to call us when It comes back?”

Richie’s head snapped between Mike and Eddie. “What? What the fuck, Mike? Is the clown back? Did the fucking clown come back and you didn’t fucking tell us-”

“It’s not back,” Mike promised, holding his hands out. “But, It…” he hesitated, glancing around. “I’ve been doing some research. I think It lives in cycles.”

Eddie gripped at Mike’s kitchen table, knuckles turning white. He wanted his inhaler, why’d he leave his fucking inhaler back at the Inn. It wasn’t real, it was psychosomatic, he didn’t have asthma, he just- he couldn’t- he couldn’t _breathe_ -

Richie was shouting. “What fucking cycles, what the fuck are you talking about-”

“Twenty-seven years!” Mike got out. “It won’t come back for another- Another fifteen years, give or take.”

Fifteen years. It was going to come back. In fifteen years. Eddie looked frantically over at Richie.

“We’ve only got fifteen more years,” he wheezed. Because that was what it amounted to, wasn’t it? Fifteen years and they were dead. Fifteen years and It was going to get them, again. Unless… Unless they didn’t come back? Unless they ran away. They could do that. They could meet up here in fourteen years, before It came back. They could grab Mike and they could get the _fuck_ out of Derry, for good. Together. Eddie would bring them all back to NYC with him, move them in with his mother…

Well he could work the details out later, the shit that didn’t quite make sense right now.

But Mike was trying to spin it the other way. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. We’ve got fifteen more years to figure this out. There’s a history in Derry, one that goes way back. People have fought this thing before. There’s records of what worked, what didn’t. We should be able to stop it. Fifteen years is a lot of time.”

“Until it’s not,” Richie whispered. He was looking at Eddie. Drinking him in.

They couldn’t solve any of that tonight. But they did get one thing out of the conversation: Mike could call them back, next time. Instead of relying on the postal service, or running the risk of their addresses changing in the interim, they had Mike as their man on the wall, promising to find them and bring them back whatever week they agreed-upon next.

Richie collapsed back onto their shared bed in the Inn, shitty mattress springs squeaking loudly as he bounced twice on it. Eddie toed off his shoes as he shut and locked the door behind them, watching Richie stare up at the ceiling.

“Do you think it’s going to work?” Eddie asked, watching Richie carefully.

“What? Killing It? No: I think we’ve got fifteen years and then we’re all going to fucking die.”

Eddie crawled into bed with Richie, climbing on top of his lap. He hit Richie in the arm, scowling down at him.

“No. I mean Mike calling us back.”

“Why the fuck aren’t you worrying about this?”

“Of course I’m fucking worrying about it!” Eddie shouted. “I had a fucking panic attack when Mike started talking about It, how’d you not see me having a fucking panic attack!”

“Probably because I was trying not to fucking puke all over Mike’s kitchen table!” Richie shouted back.

“But I can’t fucking do anything about it!” Eddie hit Richie again. “I can’t fucking do anything about it, it’s fifteen fucking years away, and we’ve got one week together right now, Richie. One week versus fifteen years. I can’t think about that, I can’t fucking look at it or I’m going to need to use my stupid fucking placebo inhaler again, so I’m not thinking about it, I’m just thinking about how Mike is going to call us back in six months and we’re going to get to see each other again, because I have to see you again, Richie, and I’ll get to see you, and that’s all that matters because that’s all we can control, Richie.”

Eddie panted, sitting astride Richie’s hips. Richie was staring up at him, eyes wide behind his glasses. Eddie fell forward and kissed Richie, grabbing his face, pulling him close. Richie bit back against his mouth, sucking on his tongue. Richie sat up, one strong arm wrapped around Eddie’s back as his untoned but obviously strong abs pulled them close together. Easily, so easily it made Eddie’s head swim, Richie flipped them, tossing Eddie down against the pillows as they kissed and kissed.

“Get this off,” Richie panted, clawing at Eddie’s shirt. They pulled apart, just enough to tear off their shirts and kick their jeans and khakis to wherever the hell clothes tossed aside in the heat of sex went. Eddie gasped as their dicks touched, sliding against each other. He bit his lip, gazing down, hypnotized, at the sight. Then Richie was there again, kissing his chin up, tearing Eddie’s gaze away. His big hand wrapped around their dicks and stroked them together.

“Eddie, can…” Richie pulled back, panting hard. His eyes were frantic behind his glasses.

He didn’t ask. Eddie shoved at him, tilting his chin up, feeling brave. Remembering that he was brave. “What?”

“Can I…” Richie’s hand drifted down from their dicks, over Eddie’s inner thigh, brushing over his balls. Back.

Eddie held Richie’s gaze and lifted his hips, jaw strong. Richie’s mouth fell open, watching his expression. Eddie grinned, feeling mean, feeling reckless. Feeling _alive_.

“Where’s your hand going, Richie?”

But it was Richie, so he didn’t stay scared for long. Or if he did, he covered it up with guff and bluster, as he always did.

“ _Where no man has gone before_ …” Richie did a fifties announcer voice.

“You got stuff?” Eddie asked, because _he_ had stuff, but he wanted to see if Richie did.

“I didn’t think you were a slut, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Well I knew you were, so I packed stuff.”

“Fucking Boy Scout.”

Eddie smirked. “Mom wouldn’t let me; that was Stan.”

Richie licked a stripe up Eddie’s nose, which-! What the absolute _fuck_ , the _dick_! Richie laughed and bounded off the bed, heading for Eddie’s multiple suitcases. “Alright, where is it? Where is it, I’ll toss all your pressed khakis into balls on the floor, come on, Eds-”

“It’s in my toiletries bag, you Neanderthal,” Eddie hissed. “Where else would it be?”

Richie bounded back over to the bed just to give Eddie a smacking kiss. He grabbed both his cheeks and squished them together.

“You’re a ridiculous little priss.”

“Stop calling me a priss!” Eddie shouted at Richie’s naked, hairy ass as he ran for the bathroom.

Richie emerged triumphant half a minute later, holding the tube of lube and box of condoms Eddie had optimistically bought from the drugstore on his way to the Inn the first day. Mr. Keene had given him a look, but Eddie hadn’t cared. Well, he had, but he had stared Mr. Keene right in the eye, daring him to say anything about it. Greta had stood there chewing her gum, barely glancing up from her magazine behind the counter. So what? Eddie was going to have sex and wanted to be prepared. He was twenty-five, he was allowed to have sex.

“You _are_ a priss,” Richie insisted as he climbed back onto the bed. Eddie smacked at him even as he settled his big, heavy weight over Eddie’s lap. “But you’re _my_ priss.”

“There’s nothing prissy about taking that stupid big dick in my ass,” Eddie snapped, defiant.

Richie gasped, eyes going a little glazed. He fell forward again, kissing Eddie within an inch of his life.

“You’re so fucking hot.”

“You’re so fucking _heavy_ ,” Eddie complained, even as he was fucking his hips into Richie’s stomach, going a little crazy with how Richie completely penned him in with his thick thighs and long torso and big, strong arms.

Fuck, Eddie was gay. Eddie was very, very gay.

He wondered if the sad momma’s boy in NYC would ever figure that out. Doubted it, for some reason.

“Alright, yell if I fuck this up,” Richie told him. Then he stopped and pressed a hand to Eddie’s chest. His eyebrows knitted together in concern. “Seriously. Don’t fucking- don’t like, _endure_ this, if it fucking hurts? Right? It’s supposed to feel good. It can feel good. It doesn’t have to hurt.”

“Just-” Eddie’s chest burned where Richie’s hand was pinning him down. Fuck, his hand nearly spanned Eddie’s chest. Eddie reached up and tried to encircle Richie’s wrist with thumb and index finger. There was a gap of two inches where they couldn’t meet. “Just finger me, you know? With the lube. If you finger me I’ll… It’ll open me up. Right?”

Richie nodded while also shrugging hopelessly.

“I think so? I- I think that’s supposed to be how it works.”

Eddie started to try and turn himself over, but Richie grabbed his jaw and pulled him in for another kiss. It felt like a goodbye, it tasted like fear. Eddie grinned and cupped Richie’s jaw in his palm.

“Richie. I’ll curse you out from here to the Derry city limits if you hurt me. Come on.”

“Okay,” Richie breathed, pressing his forehead to Eddie’s. “Okay. But I’m holding you to that.”

Finally Richie let him roll over onto his stomach. His dick slid against the rough sheets, twitching with pleasure at the stimulation. Richie nudged his knees apart and Eddie flushed, pressing his face into his folded arms. He felt…. Exposed. Richie was looking at his _asshole_. Fuck, Eddie should really hate this. Wasn’t sure he was ready to do the same to Richie, that was for sure.

But he definitely didn’t hate it. His heart was in his throat, and his stomach felt like it was full of eels. But he definitely didn’t hate it.

In fact… Richie’s blunt sausage fingers rubbed gently against his hole, smearing lube all around the outside. Slowly, slowly, he pushed one in. Eddie’s mouth fell open and his eyes squeezed shut. In fact, he really, really liked it.

Eddie was on his knees in minutes, Richie pounding into him and grunting like a caveman. Eddie was moaning like he’d never heard himself moan: all high and needy, voice an octave above where it naturally fell. But he couldn’t _stop_ himself, it just felt so _good_. Not even the sharp crest of pleasure from getting his dick sucked felt like this, it wasn’t so focused as all that. But at the same time, it was _all_ he could focus on, he was absolutely out of his _mind_ , only able to feel Richie fucking him, brain leaking out through his dick as he moaned and moaned and sounded like a fucking sorority girl showing off for her housemates.

“Eddie Eddie Eddie Eddie Eddie-” Richie panted in time with his thrusts.

Eddie reached back and grabbed Richie’s ass, hauling him in, encouraging him to fuck him faster, harder. He tried to articulate this, but all his stupid mouth managed was:

“ _Richie_ -”

“Eddie, Eddie-” Richie panted. Eddie tried again:

“ _Fuck me_ -”

This was impossible. Eddie gave up and went back to moaning (had he ever stopped? No, he almost definitely had not) and fucking his ass hard back onto Richie’s dick.

Eddie managed to articulate only one coherent thought after that, as his orgasm built in the base of his groin.

“ _Touch me_ ,” Eddie sobbed with all the feeling in his chest. Richie’s hips stuttered, body weight shifting. Then he was reaching around, tugging at Eddie’s leaking dick. His hands were still slick with lube, Eddie’s hips were slick with it, the bed was slick with it. It was disgusting. It was ridiculous. Eddie was drooling onto the sheets.

Eddie came with a shout, adding to the mess. He fucking loved it. He would hate it, in five minutes. Maybe less. Right now he fucking loved it. It was disgusting and ridiculous and wet and messy and alive, he felt so alive, Richie Tozier was pounding his dick into Eddie’s ass and he was _alive_ , he was brave and strong and his lungs worked and his dick worked and his ass felt _fucking incredible_ and his legs were strong and Richie’s weight was big and heavy behind him and Eddie was taking it all and giving back as good as he got.

Richie moaned as high as Eddie had when he came, chest _cracking_ over the sound. He collapsed on top of Eddie even as Eddie swotted back at him: “Fuck, get out, pull out, you’re gonna rip me in half.”

“Hang on, hang on, okay-” Richie groaned, sounding exhausted. A moment of adjusting and then he was slipping carefully out of Eddie. He tossed the condom… somewhere, ugh, disgusting, Eddie would make Richie deal with that. Later. …and then Richie was pushing his face into Eddie’s chest.

Eddie soothed his hands over Richie’s back, happy to hold Richie as he shuddered through the aftermath. Eddie pressed his chin to Richie’s hair and shushed him, rubbing has hands up and down over his smooth, pale skin. Absently Eddie assessed the moles on Richie’s back, looking for any irregular ones. No, shh. He didn’t need to do that. It was okay.

Eventually Richie pulled back, tugging off his glasses so he could press his cheek to Eddie’s in a snuffly gesture, asking for comfort. Eddie kissed his wet cheeks, his eyebrows, his eyelids, his temples, his forehead.

“Fuck Mike,” Richie finally mumbled.

“Not before I fuck you,” Eddie mused.

“I’m not helping him with his clown shit.”

They would. Eddie didn’t point it out to Richie. That was for tomorrow.

“I’m not coming back in fifteen years,” Richie growled. “Fourteen years, and then we’re fucking off together. We’ll call everyone in, we’ll give them the skinny, then we’ll hogtie Mike and get the fuck out of dodge. Together.”

“Okay, Richie,” Eddie agreed. Except he wasn’t. Agreeing. Because the thing about having an anxiety disorder was: you planned for things. You figured shit out. You overthought every scenario until you had a contingency for everything. And although Eddie hadn’t known about It while he was living his other life, the anxiety disorder had never gone away. All it had to do now was fold in the details, down the well-worn pathways of his mind that he’d trod again and again.

They wouldn’t be able to run away from this. They’d have to face this. Not tomorrow, or next year. In fifteen years. Him and Richie had thirty, maybe, weeks to be together before then.

Not even a year.

And then they’d die, fighting a fucking clown.

Eddie wasn’t sure how to make thirty weeks long enough. He thought maybe he could figure it out. Someday.

* * *

Eddie woke early on Sunday. His things were already packed, except for his toiletry bag. He snuck into the bathroom on bare feet, brushed his teeth, washed his face, combed his hair. He couldn’t leave without doing those things because he’d forget who he was, by the end of today. Wouldn’t know why he’d skipped brushing his teeth or slicking back his hair. Would it be weird enough to trigger a memory, in his amnesiac self? Couldn’t take that risk. Leaving Derry and then having a breakdown a few hours later, trying to rush back… He needed his life outside to continue on as normal. It was the only way he could keep coming back: if everything else proceeded as planned.

When he finished, Eddie snuck out of the bathroom and tucked his toiletry bag into one of his suitcases. His shoes were by the door. Eddie folded up his pajamas and slipped them in behind the toiletry bag, then zipped up the suitcase. He was done.

Richie dozed on the bed.

They were going to see each other again. And even though Eddie’s brain helpfully offered up a million and one ways it could go wrong—what if Mike died? What if Mike couldn’t find them? What if Richie changed his number, if Richie moved, if Richie changed his name, what if one of them died, what if Mike was wrong and the clown came back _now_ and it _got_ Mike, it got him when he was alone and without the Losers around to protect him—Eddie knew he had to be brave. Knew he _could_ be brave, because he had been before.

Eddie leaned over and pressed a sweet, tender kiss to Richie’s forehead, greasy with sleep. Richie stirred but didn’t wake. That was for the best.

When Eddie’s cab crossed the Derry town limits the memories slowly faded away, until he was in the Bangor airport, attributing the vague heartbreak in his chest to returning home after a productive business trip. It was always a little sad to have to go home again, right? Everybody felt like that.


	3. 2004, Age 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Eddie's mother has diabetes in this chapter, and we're going to start seeing her slow decline from the disease from this chapter and for the next few. I'll keep warning for it up top at the beginning of each chapter it shows up.

Richie threw his fries over at Eddie, then tried to swipe his coke while he was distracted picking French fries out of his hair. Eddie shrieked like the little demon he was and grabbed his coke back.

“You have your _own_.”

“But it doesn’t taste as _sweet_ ,” Richie droned.

Mike snickered at the both of them, happily going to town on his BLT.

“Hey Richie, I heard you got the morning show?” he asked.

Eddie turned with interest to Richie, even as he guarded his plate and drink. “Huh? You didn’t tell me.”

Richie shrugged, scratching at his head in embarrassment. He kind of hated talking about himself and his life outside of Derry. It didn’t feel like _him_. It felt like… It felt like when you were black-out drunk, and you woke up the next morning, and then you heard a voicemail from yourself or you dug through your pockets and you found the receipts, and suddenly you remembered a conversation or something you did when you were _that_ fucking wasted, like pissing and puking at the same time in the middle of a Chicago street, or making out with some girl and then pulling back like, ugh, gross, what were you _doing,_ or getting into a tearful argument with the bodega owner, explaining that no, you _couldn’t_ have cheddar cheese, you needed _swiss_ , why didn’t he under _stand_ , this was _important_. When you looked back on those memories it was like, okay, yes: that was you, doing all those things. But for fuck’s sake, could you please not be held responsible for what _that_ version of you did? Out of common courtesy?

That’s how Richie felt about his entire _life_ outside these couple non-consecutive weeks he got to spend in Derry every year. Like it was being lived by a black-out drunk version of himself. And never did he feel _more_ like that than he did about the shock jock job.

“Yeah, uh. Dick and Terry in the morning. It’s shit but they’re talking syndication in a few networks, which. It’s big, for my career, I guess.”

“Richie,” Eddie said. He was smiling softly, and Richie wanted to tell him, no, please: it was shit, everything about Richie was shit that wasn’t here with Eddie.

“I’m doing stand-up, too. You know, do the shock-jock thing in the morning five days a week, do a couple night shows at clubs on weekends. Want to do the stand-up thing more—it’s not as regular work but could be a lot bigger, you know?”

“High risk, high reward,” Eddie nodded knowingly. Richie wished he wouldn’t be so fucking understanding.

“Well you’d know all about that, right? Risk analyst. Or would you advise me against it?”

“I’d advise you to do whatever made you happy,” Eddie replied.

Richie hated it. He slouched back in the booth and kicked at Eddie’s feet under the table. Eddie’s eyes flickered over to his, silent communication passing between them.

It’s not that Richie wanted to spend all his time back at the Inn fucking Eddie’s brains out—though, okay, actually, that was definitely true. But he wanted to help Mike too, and visit with him, and all that shit. It was just…

It was just, it was like Mike was watching over them while they were sleep walking. Or dreaming. It was like Mike was a scientist in some sort of sleep lab, except he had a read-out of their dreams on a screen in front of him. Whatever embarrassing shit their subconscious threw up on the screen while they were asleep, the shit they had _no_ control over, Mike had front-row tickets to. He saw Eddie sleep-waking back to his mother, living with her, taking her placebos and living in fear. He saw Richie living his life in the closet (not that Mike knew that part of it), spewing lowest-common-denominator trash humor. Sexist joke, fat jokes. Fucking racist shit, too, as much as he could get away with.

It felt like Mike had a DVD recording of every gross dream they’d ever had or embarrassing tirade they ever went on while black-out drunk. And Richie resented him for it. It was stupid, and Mike was sacrificing a hell of a lot to be the man on the wall, Richie knew that. He lived for these couple weeks a year Richie and Eddie could be brought back to life, too.

But he also wasn’t going through it like Richie and Eddie. He wasn’t walking knowingly back into oblivion twice a year, after being alive for a mere week or two. He wasn’t walking out on the love of his life, hoping and praying they would see each other again, no fucking guarantee, placing his life in the hands of a friend. A friend who could die, or forget, or just lose track of where he was, across the vast continental United States. That was Richie and Eddie’s alone.

And, at the end of the day, also Richie really wanted to be back at the Inn fucking Eddie’s brains out.

They finished lunch with Mike and even went to the movies with him, laughing and chucking popcorn at each other. They remade _Starsky and Hutch_ and Richie maybe enjoyed a movie about two super close best friends who definitely had no homoerotic tension between them at _all_ running around and saving each other’s lives. Liked the original TV show better, but that had been old when he was a community college dropout, discovering it through TV Land reruns.

They bid Mike a good night and promised to meet up with him again in the morning at the library, where they’d have to be subject to Mike’s new stack of research he’d done in the intervening six months since they’d been apart. Richie did not care for this part of their arrangement, but he guessed it was the least they could do, since Mike was helping them keep up their little rendezvous.

Finally, _finally_ , they were back in Derry Inn, and back in their room, and back on their bed, Eddie grinning as he grabbed Richie by the front of his shirt and dragged him in for a kiss. Richie grinned into it, glasses smushed between them but unwilling to take them off and miss seeing a single micro-expression on Eddie’s face.

“You fuck anyone else?” Richie teased, because he already could see it in Eddie’s face that he hadn’t. Eddie scowled and shoved at him.

“Fuck you, don’t ask that.”

Eddie was right, of course: it was a dangerous fucking game, asking that. One time Richie had come close, last year: some girl had gotten drunk as a skunk at a party, and Richie was just drunk enough to convince himself this was okay, this was what he’d wanted. But he hadn’t been able to get it up, and he just fingered the girl until she came, or acted like she came, and Richie had shoved his limp dick back into his pants, blaming it on the whiskey.

Yeah, it hadn’t been the fucking whiskey. He wondered when dream!him was going to figure out that he was gay. Had a feeling he pretty much knew, but wasn’t willing to do anything about it.

Was kind of dreading the day that he _did_ , because it would mean cheating on Eddie. Probably a lot, if Richie knew himself at all.

There was no way around it, though. Every time they left, they forgot the other one existed. They _couldn’t_ stay loyal to each other, except entirely by accident. Which they’d managed so far, but they were twenty-eight, now. Eventually their luck was going to run out and they’d end up screwing somebody else, in the outside world. In the dream world.

“You didn’t though, did you?” Richie grinned down at Eddie.

“Did you?” Eddie shot back, jutting his jaw out.

Richie shook his head, kissing along the defiant little jawline. Eddie relaxed back into Richie’s arm, the one that was holding him, even as Richie’s other arm reached under Eddie’s shirt to tweak at his nipples. Eddie hissed and arched up, presenting himself to Richie, asking for more. Gently Richie lowered Eddie backwards onto the pillows, laying him out for himself. Fuck, he just wanted to take Eddie apart all day, every day.

Only had six more days to do so. Before they were separated again for six months or more.

Pushing those thoughts aside—down, down, into the knot of fear in his stomach, into a sickness that he could keep small right now, that would grow and grow over the course of the week until they were staring at each other on Sunday, eyes red, lips wet, walking the plank into the yawning chasm of Memory, relying on that leap of faith named Mike Hanlon to bring them back again—Richie kissed his way down Eddie’s jaw, nipped at his throat, his shoulders, his chest. He pushed Eddie’s shirt up quickly so he could keep kissing his way down, biting at one nipple, then the other. Eddie arched up into his touch again and again, until his hips were undulating, begging Richie to pay attention to them.

Richie mouthed at Eddie’s stomach, licked a stripe above his stupid khakis. “Do you want me to fuck you?” Richie teased.

“Of fucking course I want you to fuck me,” Eddie hissed, feral and gorgeous.

Richie stared up at him. God, how he loved him.

God, how it was all so unfair.

It went by too fast after that. Richie tore off Eddie’s pants and underwear, licking a thick stripe up Eddie’s dick and sucking briefly at the head. Then he was tearing off his own clothes as Eddie tried to turn over. Richie grabbed him, socks still on, dragging Eddie up so they were chest-to-chest, kissing him deeply.

“Stay here,” Richie whispered.

“I’m right here,” Eddie said back. He was smiling.

Richie loved to make him smile. Felt sure he didn’t do it enough, in the outside world.

“Come on, Richie,” Eddie whined, trying to turn over again.

“No, wait. I think…” Richie pushed Eddie back onto the pillows again, big hands moving over his ass. “I think we can do it like this.”

What Richie really wanted was to be able to kiss Eddie while they fucked. He was pretty sure he could make it line up okay—and he was tall enough that it should work. He popped the cap on the lube with one hand as the other tilted Eddie’s hips up, squeezing roughly at Eddie’s ass. Eddie’s breath came faster as he watched Richie work.

“Like this,” Richie explained as he pushed a finger inside, fucking Eddie gently as he got him wet.

Eddie bit his lip, pupils blown as he stared down at Richie. He nodded. “Okay. Okay.”

Richie worked fast, slicking Eddie up inside. Then a condom—Eddie insisted on condoms, he hated having come inside him, the priss—and Richie stared down as they figured out where to put all their limbs. After a moment Richie hauled Eddie’s ass up further, throwing his legs over his shoulders. Eddie yelped, then started laughing, even as Richie lined himself up.

“Don’t laugh at me,” Richie complained, even as he was laughing too.

“Hang on, let me-” Eddie twisted backwards, grabbed a pillow. He shoved it under his hips and there, that was better. Richie bit his lip as he pushed inside. Eddie groaned, _way_ too loud, but the owners of the Inn had to know what they were doing here, twice a year for the past three years. Cat was out of the bag, out of the frying pan into the fire, all that jazz.

“See?” Richie said, breath punched-out. He grinned down at Eddie and tried for a wink, but he was a little out of his mind with the feel of Eddie around his dick so he wasn’t sure if he managed it. “Told you it would work.”

“You haven’t kissed me like this yet,” Eddie pointed out, even as he started to swivel his hips down against Richie’s groin. He bit his lip as Richie snapped his hips into him. “Are- hng- you sure-”

Carefully Richie leaned down to cover Eddie’s body with his own, bending Eddie in half as he did. But they were young, Eddie was flexible—Eddie was _shockingly_ fit, actually, it was kind of intimidating and Richie needed to think about it less, really—and easily enough Richie was locking lips with Eddie, dick still buried deep inside him.

“See?” Richie mumbled against Eddie’s lips. He fucked gently, sweetly into him. “See?”

Eddie groaned, moving with Richie. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I see.”

“Tell me I was right,” Richie cooed as their hips fell into a rhythm.

“Fuck you,” Eddie hissed.

“Maybe later,” Richie giggled.

Eddie sneered up at him. “Liar.”

“I never said I wouldn’t!” Richie protested. Inside of Eddie, his dick jumped at the thought. It was nerves, but also maybe a touch of excited curiosity, too.

“You’re such- hng- a f- _uh_ -cking- liar-” Eddie panted. With each syllable Richie fucked him harder, grinning at the way Eddie tried to force the words out with every breath Richie punched out of him with his dick.

“You just don’t wanna stick your fingers in my ass,” Richie teased. “I’m topping for _your_ sake, Eddie my love.”

“Shut up, shut up,” Eddie gritted out.

“Make me.”

Except Eddie could, in this position. Eddie reached a hand up and grabbed Richie’s neck, pulling him down for a kiss. That worked pretty fucking well, actually. Richie let Eddie stick his tongue in his mouth, bite at his lip. Fight back to reassert his dominance, even as Richie gave his ass the pounding of a lifetime.

When Richie came he collapsed, Eddie’s legs still thrown over his shoulders. Eddie groaned weakly, legs flopping out to the sides and slowly sliding down over Richie’s arms. “Gerroff,” Eddie wheezed.

“Hang on,” Richie mumbled into Eddie’s neck. He licked at beads of sweat there. “Hang on,” he whispered, scraping his teeth lightly at Eddie’s skin.

“You’re gonna lose the condom,” Eddie whined. “Pull out before your dick goes soft.”

“I got a minute,” Richie mumbled, even as he started to doze.

Eddie must have dozed off with him, because what felt like a second later but must have been longer Eddie was smacking at Richie’s arm.

“Fuck, Richie, you fuck, pull out.”

Richie groaned and pushed himself up, holding the base of the condom as he pulled his limp dick the rest of the way out of Eddie’s ass. He’d gone too soft, and come had already leaked out down Eddie’s ass and onto the sheets. Richie wondered if Eddie would notice.

“Richie you fucking asshole!” Eddie shouted.

Richie ran into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him.

* * *

They were sprawled around Mike’s living room, Richie perched up on the top of a loveseat, Mike and Eddie on his couch together. There were empty bottles of beer scattered all around the coffee table, the end tables, even some tucked under the coffee table on the hardwood floors. Richie drained the last dregs of his beer and belched loudly.

“Classy,” Mike said.

“That’s me,” Richie agreed. He pushed up off the backrest of the loveseat, using his long legs to step over it to the ground. “Eds? Another?”

Eddie had been sipping at his only half-empty beer. As Richie walked past, he put three fingers to the bottom of the bottle and tilted it up, up, forcing Eddie to chug. After a couple seconds Eddie spluttered and batted his hand away, but he’d downed another quarter of the beer. Eddie glared up at him.

“It’s almost like you’re trying to get me liquored up, or something.”

Richie beamed down at him. “Or something,” he agreed. “Mike?”

Mike groaned, but then waved his hand. “Yeah, yeah. Not like I need to drive.”

“That’s the spirit!” Richie crowed. “ _Un mas, un mas, un mas! Tres mas!_ ”

Before collecting up the beer, Richie rummaged through Mike’s pantry, looking for some more snacks. They’d already housed a couple pizzas between them, but the bottomless Tozier stomach demanded more if they were going to be sitting around drinking for a while yet. He found some potato chips and… _jackpot_.

Richie carried his loot back out to the living room where Eddie was leaning against the arm of the couch, smiling at Mike and nodding indulgently.

“It’s fascinating, what little I can find on them. There’s still some Shokopiwah still living in this area, you know. I figured I could go out sometime and interview them, see what they know. Maybe you guys could come with me.”

“Where we going?” Richie asked. He tossed the potato chips onto the coffee table, then passed Mike and Eddie their beers. He slid onto the armrest Eddie was leaning against, other hand behind his back. Eddie eyed him up warily.

“What’re you doing?” Eddie asked, ignoring Richie’s question.

“Where are we going?” Richie asked again. But he was smiling, and Eddie was glaring up at him, and Richie couldn’t keep anything from Eddie, even for a minute.

“Richie, I swear to fuck, if you put an ice cube down my shirt or-”

“Relax, spazzoid. Look what I found.”

Relenting, Richie pulled his hand out from behind his back. In it was a pack of gummy worms. Eddie’s eyes widened and he grabbed for them. Richie pulled the bag back, out of reach.

“What you say you and I go all Lady and the Tramp on them?” Richie asked, waggling his eyebrows.

Eddie scowled and blushed, pointedly _not_ shooting a glance at Mike.

They weren’t sure if he, you know. _Knew_. They weren’t exactly _hiding_ it, but they weren’t exactly sucking each other’s dicks in Mike’s living room, you know? And it wasn’t like they could stroll down Main Street holding hands, or kiss in public. That shit barely flew on _Will and Grace_ , and even then they had to play it off like a joke. It definitely wasn’t getting by in fucking _Derry_.

“Give me the fucking worms, worm-for-brains.” Eddie lunged, snatching the bag from Richie’s hand. Only because Richie let him, of course. Eddie tore into one with all the fervor of a kid who never got to eat junk food. “Mike wants to talk to Indians,” Eddie explained, through a mouthful of decimated gummy worm.

“Uh, they’re called _Native Americans_ , Eddie my dear,” Richie reminded him. Eddie flipped him off. Richie leaned down and pressed a vicious kiss on top of his head. Then he danced off, only to climb over the back of the couch and slide down between Mike and Eddie. He kicked his legs up into Mike’s lap and snuggled up against Eddie’s side. Mike snorted and twisted off the cap on his beer.

“Yeah, there’s this tribe. The Shokopiwah-”

“Shock-oh-wah-wha?”

“Shokopiwah.”

“Shuck-oppah,” Eddie repeated, sounding sure of himself. Richie tilted his head back and watched Eddie frown through the syllables. “Shock-oppwah. Shock…”

“Shokopiwah,” Mike said.

Richie blinked the blink of the buzzed, eyelids closing and opening at very slightly different times. “Mike. What the fuck.”

“They’re native to this land,” Mike explained. “They were here before the first colony of white settlers showed up.”

“Beaver trappers,” Richie remembered. He giggled and looked back at Eddie. “Really let our ancestors down, huh?”

Eddie shushed him, glancing nervously at Mike. But if Mike understood, he didn’t let on.

“You think they were dealing with Pennywise. Before we ever got here,” Eddie figured out.

Mike grinned excitedly. “Exactly! Maybe they know more. Maybe they have records going further back!”

Richie groaned and knocked his head back against Eddie’s arm. Eddie shushed him, carding his hand through Richie’s hair. That actually… was awesome, so Richie stopped being a brat and held still, hoping Eddie would keep doing it.

“Do you want us to go with you?” Eddie offered. Richie stifled another groan, because he felt sure that Eddie would stop scratching his scalp if he did.

But Mike was shrugging. “I still have to figure out where they live, who to talk to, all that. I’m not ready this week. If I haven’t talked to them by the next time you guys come, then, maybe.”

“Should have called back Ben,” Richie observed. He touched Eddie’s leg in silent reassurance. “He would’ve hiked all over with you for your research project bullshit.”

Mike shrugged again, little smile on his face. “I’ve got time.”

“We’re not exactly great researchers,” Eddie pointed out, not the least bit contrite. But Mike wasn’t upset.

“C’mon, your vacations are like, my vacations, too. I don’t need you guys for that. I just like to have someone to bounce ideas off, sometimes.”

“Well!” Richie pushed himself upright, slapping his thighs with both hands. His beer spilled onto his pants and he swore, brushing at the wet spot. Eh, whatever. “If this is your vacation, Mike my man, let’s not waste another second of it talking about work.”

Richie trotted forward to the Blockbuster bag he’d thrown under Mike’s TV when him and Eddie had come over that evening. He pulled out his spoils, plastic DVD cases crinkling under his fingers.

“ _Kill Bill, X-Men,_ or _Hulk_?”

“You didn’t get the new _Matrix_ movie?” Eddie complained, looking at the selections.

“No, dude, I told you, I don’t want to watch a movie about being stuck in a reality that you don’t remember is all a façade that some higher power has forced you into,” Richie whined. “Now come on! Slashy sword lady, slashy hairy man, or… Hulk.”

Eddie’s eyes drifted down to Richie’s chest, and his brain seemed to kind of… fritz out for a second. Richie noted this with no small amount of pride.

“I vote we re-open the possibility of romcoms,” Mike put in.

“Vetoed,” Richie said automatically. He waggled X-Men 2 at Mike. “There’s a sexy red head in this one…”

Mike snorted. “I’m not Ben. Or Bill.”

Richie waggled X-Men 2 at Eddie, knowing he could win on the promise of Hugh Jackman’s masculine shoulders. But Eddie had snapped out of his lust-induced hypnotism and was looking over at Mike, expression troubled. Richie dropped his arms, taken aback, wondering what he did wrong, what he could do to fix it.

“Do you ever…” Eddie started. He glanced over at Richie, and even though Richie didn’t know what this was about, his heart broke at the look on Eddie’s face. “Do you ever think we should tell them? Call them back?”

Richie tossed the DVDs onto Mike’s cable box. Mike peeled at the label on his beer bottle. That was one way to sober up.

“You guys told me I shouldn’t,” Mike reminded Eddie, gently.

“It’s fucking hell,” Richie reminded Eddie. “Every fucking time.”

“I know, I know,” Eddie agreed. He looked over at Richie and their eyes locked. Silently Richie willed himself not to start crying. He was a few beers too deep to make those kinds of promises, though. “But… to _never_ know…”

“It wouldn’t make a difference!” Richie reminded him. “In their lives. In how things were going. It doesn’t make a difference in my life, does it? I’m still the same fucking hack I was before I remembered you. You still live with your fucking mother, you still use your inhaler—fuck, you still use it _here_ , Eddie, because two weeks a year doesn’t cancel out fifty fucking weeks of sense-memory.”

“But it would give them the chance to be themselves again,” Eddie protested. “They’d at least get the _chance_ , before-”

“A chance at _what_?!” Richie shouted, fuck, was he crying? He was fucking crying, _fuck, Eddie, you fucking asshole_. Mike was staring at him wide-eyed, and _shut the fuck up, Mike, don’t fucking look at me…_ “A chance at a couple sad fucks in the janky ass Derry Inn? You want to call Ben back so the fat fuck can cry while Bev and Bill make out in front of him? Want to call Bill back so he can cheat on his girlfriend?” He wished he could _stop fucking crying_ , he didn’t even know _why_ he was ( _you know, you know_ ). “You want to drag Stan away from his wife, his family, just so he can be-” Richie wiped his face and jabbed a finger at Mike. “Don’t call Stan, don’t you ever call Stan, I know something’s going to happen, I fucking _feel it_ , don’t you _fucking call Stan_.”

“I won’t, Richie,” Mike agreed, hands out. “Promise.”

“You want to condemn them to this, Eddie?” Richie spread his arms out, taking in Mike’s house, the It research, this whole fucking, God-forsaken town.

Eddie had stayed quiet through this tirade, by some fucking miracle. But now he jumped up from the couch and strode across Mike’s living room. He grabbed Richie’s neck, dragged him in until they were inches apart. Richie sobbed, squeezing his eyes shut, unable to take in the amount of love pouring out of those stupid, beautiful Bambi eyes; those eyes that only remembered him for fourteen days a year, and wouldn’t look twice at him if they passed on the street in any other city but this Hellmouth of a town.

“Richie. Richie, look at me. _Richie_.”

Richie struggled to open his eyes, blinking the tears off his soaked eyelashes. In reward, Eddie cupped his cheek in his palm. Headless of Mike, of what he knew or didn’t, of what he could plausibly deny, Richie turned into the touch. He pressed a kiss to Eddie’s palm, eyes fluttering shut again as he fought to bring himself under control.

“Richie.”

Reluctantly Richie opened his eyes again. Eddie was staring seriously up at him. He had lines in his forehead now—just the starts of them, just visible when he pushed his eyebrows up or squinched them down tight. But they were there. They were aging before each other’s eyes, six months at a time. But now his expression opened, lines smoothing out as he looked at Richie with such palpable love that even Richie couldn’t pretend he couldn’t see it.

“This isn’t hell. This couldn’t be. Not when you’re here. Not when Mike’s here.”

“ _Hell is other people_ , Eds.”

“Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That’s why it’s hell out _there_ , Richie. Because we’re not surrounded by the people we love. Who love us.”

“What are you talking about, Eddie, I get surrounded by your mother every night.”

“Richie.”

“Yeah.” Richie sighed and pressed his forehead against Eddie’s. They breathed together. “Yeah, Eds. I know.”

“It feels selfish,” Mike admitted, from the couch. When Richie and Eddie turned to look at him, he elaborated. His hands spread around his beer. “To call them back. It feels like… misery loves company. It’s why I was never going to call any of you back, until I had to.”

“But aren’t we making that choice for them?” Eddie asked. “Shouldn’t we call them back, once, and tell them what’s happening? So they could make an informed decision? So they could know?”

“And what if they say they wish we hadn’t? That they want to go back to their lives and forget all about Derry?” Richie asked. “I might have.” He looked over at Eddie. _If it wasn’t for you_.

Mike pushed up from the couch and swayed on his feet. “We’re not going to settle this tonight,” he declared. Then he jabbed a finger at the TV. “And I vote Hulk. Love that big green dude.”

Turns out Mike’s movie choice sucked. But Richie nodded off onto Eddie’s shoulder halfway through, so it didn’t matter anyway.

* * *

Richie tucked his chin against the juncture of Eddie’s neck and shoulder. Their hands were intertwined in Eddie’s lap as they watched _The Two Towers_. They were gonna get through all of them this week, that was the deal. Eddie’s ass was pressed back against Richie’s groin, but they’d just had sex before they settled in to watch, so it wasn’t driving Richie crazy yet.

Maybe it was because they were watching a movie where the plot centered around a gold ring, or maybe it was because Richie was a sap, or maybe it was because the impossibility of their situation was enough to drive anyone insane. But Richie pressed a kiss to Eddie’s neck, then snuffled his nose behind Eddie’s ear. Then he whispered: “We should get married.”

Eddie stiffened in Richie’s arms and Richie heard what he had said like it was in the third person. He shifted back, hoping Eddie wouldn’t look at him.

“We can’t.”

They could.

Richie hesitated, thumb stroking over Eddie’s knuckles.

It was easier to just accept that they couldn’t. Just take Eddie’s answer as technically correct and not look too hard at it. Let it drop because they had an excuse.

But like a scab, Richie had to pick at it.

“We could.”

Eddie turned around to look at him now, squirming out of Richie’s arms. Richie mourned the loss, but Eddie wasn’t pulling away—not yet, at least. He slung his legs over Richie’s, grabbed at his hands, rubbed nervously at them.

“Richie…”

“Mass legalized it. This year.” Richie’s heart pounded in his chest. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears.

“Derry city limits don’t go to Massachusetts, Richie.”

Richie bit his lip. “But if we left together. Maybe we could remember. Just until we did it. And then, and then you could go back to your mom, but we’d be married, you know? You wouldn’t marry anyone else.”

“We’d only be married in Massachusetts,” Eddie pointed out. “And what if we did try and marry someone else? Would we remember? Would we have a freak-out every time we rediscovered it and then just forget again a day, an hour later? Richie, what the fuck would that do to us?”

“Look it was just a fucking idea,” Richie grumbled, shoving back, away from Eddie. He resettled himself down on the other side of the bed, legs drawn up to his chest.

It was just a fucking idea.

Eddie was quiet. The movie played out in front of them. The men and women were fleeing for Helm’s Deep. Richie stared hard at the TV, not seeing the dramatic scenes flickering across the shitty B&B TV screen.

After a minute Eddie sighed and reached out for Richie. Richie glared at him and refused to meet him halfway.

“What if we bought each other rings?” Eddie suggested. “We wouldn’t know, back in… but we’d know here. And then we’d have just a little bit of each other with us.”

“No,” Richie shook his head. His eyes weren’t burning, they _weren’t_ , it was fucking… seasonal allergies, or whatever Eddie bitched about. Was it the right time of year for that? Eddie always seemed to have them, one for every season. “I’d just fucking throw it away, or something. When I forgot.”

Eddie’s face screwed up in sorrow and he pulled away again. Richie kept his arms crossed as he stared at the TV. Served him right. He should have never suggested it. Didn’t know what he was thinking. Because as much as it _felt_ like here, Derry, was the waking world, where they were their true selves, that couldn’t be right, could it? If you were the sum of your experiences, if you were what you did, then who they were was who they were fifty weeks out of the year. They _were_ their dream-selves, more so than they were these people, in Derry. Who they were in Derry was just a fantasy, a vacation. Unreal and not who they were, not really. What happened in Derry stayed in Derry.

But then Eddie was crawling into Richie’s lap, shoving at his shoulder. Forcing Richie to look up at him—the only time Richie had to look up to him, the short asshole.

“Hey.” Eddie thumbed at Richie’s jaw. “I love you.”

Richie’s breath caught in his throat.

Then he jumped up and locked himself in the bathroom.

“Richie!” Eddie called through the door.

Richie slammed his head back against the door, chest like a clenched _fist_ , face like _fire_ , head feeling like it was going to float away like one of Its balloons. Richie knocked his head against the door again, and then one more time for good measure.

“You _fuck_!” Richie called out.

“I’m a fuck? You’re a fuck!” Eddie shouted back at him through the locked door.

“ _You’re_ a fuck!” Richie called back. He clenched his fists and slammed them back against the door. “You’re not allowed to _reject_ my fucking _proposal_ and then tell me you _love_ me for the first time, you fucking asshole!”

“You’re not supposed to propose to people who don’t know that you love them!” Eddie hollered back.

Spinning around, Richie whipped the door open. Eddie had been shoving against it, must have been, because now he stumbled forward, straight into Richie’s arms. Richie gathered him up and didn’t let him go, even when Eddie started struggling against him after the shock wore off.

“You’re such a fucking drama queen,” Eddie snarled, fighting against him. “You shoulda done theater when we were in high school, you’re such a theater kid, you always need to be the center of attention and make it a big _thing_ -”

“ _Eddie_ ,” Richie breathed. “How do you not know I love you?”

Eddie pulled up short. His cheeks flushed and he glanced away, suddenly unable to meet Richie’s eyes. All the fight drained out of him.

“You never said it.”

Eddie would kill him, later. But Richie scooped him up in his arms and carried Eddie back to the bed. He climbed on top of Eddie, boxing him in with thighs and arms and chest.

“ _Eddie_ ,” Richie breathed. “I didn’t… I thought it was something we couldn’t say. Because…” he wasn’t sure why. Because they already knew? Because they couldn’t let themselves, or acknowledge that they’d _already_ let themselves? (Because Richie had been scared, so scared, that Eddie wouldn’t say it back; because while Richie felt everything too strongly and too deeply, he was afraid Eddie didn’t know _what_ he felt himself, couldn’t acknowledge it—not while his mother was alive.)

“Eddie,” Richie repeated, more firmly. He lifted one hand to sweep it over Eddie’s forehead, cup his cheek, tilt his chin up. “I _love_ you.” Richie bent down to kiss his nose. “I love you.” He kissed one cheek. “I love you.” He kissed the other. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“Okay, okay,” Eddie grumbled beneath him, trying to squirm away. “I get it.”

No, he didn’t. Eddie couldn’t possibly, if he felt like he needed to ask, or wasn’t sure. But now Richie knew. And if there was one thing he would remember, that he _swore_ to himself to remember, it was to tell Eddie he loved him every time he felt it. Which was _all_ the time.

* * *

A new movie came out at the new movie theater in the mall, so on Saturday, their last day before they left, Richie and Eddie went to see it together.

Richie fled the theater in tears, Eddie running to keep up with him.

“Richie! Richie!”

“ _Fuck them!_ ” Richie shouted, startling some pigeons. A couple old-timers across the street glared at him. Eddie was glancing around even as he ran up, hands out, trying to placate him.

“Richie-”

Richie spun around, grabbing for Eddie’s shoulders. “ _They had a choice, Eddie_!”

Eddie’s eyes were red, but his cheeks dry. He nodded. “I know, Richie.”

Richie shook him harder. “They had a choice! They had a choice not to forget, and they _chose to forget_!”

“I know, I know.”

“I would never forget you,” Richie swore, even though it was a lie, even though it would be proven a lie tomorrow afternoon, when he crossed over the town line. He wrapped his hand around Eddie’s neck, pulling him close. Eddie’s eyes darted around nervously, but Richie pressed their foreheads together, headless of who was looking. They didn’t live in this stupid fucking town anyway. This real unreality, that they could only vacation in. It wasn’t their world. What people thought of them here wasn’t his concern.

“If I could, if I could…” Richie moaned. “If I could remember, Eddie. I would try so hard. I would remember you ever day. I’d never forget you, if I could.”

“I know, Richie. Me too. I don’t want to forget you, either.”

“We could leave together,” Richie suggested, wildly. His heart wrenched as Eddie’s eyes closed, because he knew. He knew what Eddie was going to say, it was why he never brought it up, after the first time. It was the thing they never spoke of, even though Richie thought, it could work, it could, Eddie, why wouldn’t you just let this work? Why wouldn’t you even give it a _shot_?

“I have to go back to my mom,” Eddie whispered, pained.

“I could come with you.”

“Richie…”

“I don’t want to forget you,” Richie sobbed. He rolled his forehead against Eddie’s, broken, crying.

“You won’t. Not forever.” Eddie reached up and stroked Richie’s cheek. “It’s just temporary, Richie.”

“When does it _stop_ being temporary?” Richie whispered. He was scared, he was _so scared_ of the answer.

“Maybe…” Eddie bit his lip. Then he straightened up, jaw tight. Richie knew that face. Eddie was being _brave_. “When my mom dies,” he announced. “She’s sick. Diabetes. She’s getting sicker. When she dies, we can try leaving together. Write ourselves notes and pin them to our shirts. Handcuff our wrists together. See if we can’t force ourselves to stay together, even if we forget everything else.”

Something dangerously like hope beat inside Richie’s lungs, behind his ribs, clawing to get out of his chest.

“You promise?”

Eddie grabbed Richie’s wrist and squeezed it tight. His big eyes glinted with a manic zeal and his chin tilted up like an old-timey hero. Richie would follow him to the gates of hell, like this. Eddie had it sorted. Eddie had a plan. Eddie knew what to do and when to do it, because Eddie was brave, _so brave_ , braver than Richie ever had to be.

“I promise.”

Richie believed him.


	4. 2006, Age 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Eddie's mother is in the first scene of this chapter, and it describes some of her declining health that is the result of diabetes.

“Eddie? It’s Mike. Mike Hanlon, from Derry.”

Eddie’s head hurt. What…

“It’s time to come home.”

_Get in there, Doctor K!_

_I’ll blow you for a quarter._

_Eddie!_

_How about for a dime?_

_Eddie, my love…_

_Look at me, Eddie, look at me!_

_I would never forget you._

“Mike?”

On the other end of the line, five hundred miles away, Eddie could hear Mike Hanlon smile.

“Yeah, Eddie. I’m about to call up Richie. You’ve got a week’s vacation on the calendar, starting tomorrow. Your plane ticket is already booked. Check your safe, Eddie.”

Eddie stared around his office, memories flooding back. Mike was right. He had a safe, at home. He remembered that now. Something his mother couldn’t get into, that he never gave her the code for, that he hoped she didn’t even know existed, hidden in the back of his closet, on a high shelf, behind empty shoeboxes. Eddie had already been sitting, but he felt blown back, like he’d collapsed into his chair, slammed his back and head against the backrest. If he had a handset he would have dropped it. As it was, the headset trembled violently in front of his mouth.

“I remember,” Eddie promised. Did he say that every time? He couldn’t remember—didn’t remember everything, yet. But he thought he remembered that was normal. That happened every time.

He remembered Richie. Remembered _everything_.

“I’ll be there. Thanks, Mike. See you soon.”

“Travel safe,” Mike replied, chipper. He would be: this was like his biannual vacation, too.

Eddie cut off work early—something he _never_ did, except for twice a year, apparently. Eddie spent the commute home learning a lot about himself. He was gay, that was a big one. His mother was insane and he had hardly anything _actually_ wrong with him. His inhaler was a damn placebo. Eddie pulled it out of his pocket as the subway car screeched and shook around him. He shook it lightly, hearing the familiar sound of plastic and metal rattling against each other. His chest got tight, his throat felt like it was closing. But he didn’t have asthma, he didn’t. Why did he still feel like he did? Why did it feel like if he used the inhaler, he’d feel better? It was a placebo, he knew it was.

He used his inhaler before he got off the subway and his breathing returned to normal. That was some bullshit.

So caught up was he in the safe, in Richie, in getting his plane tickets and leaving for Derry, for Mike, for Richie, Richie, _Richie_ , that Eddie almost forgot who he was. Who his half-self was. But he didn’t have the luxury of not remembering. Not yet.

“Eddie bear?”

Dutifully Eddie made his way into the living room, though his teeth ground together in his skull. He just had to survive one night in the house with her. One night, and then he was on a plane to Derry, away from this hated place.

“Yes, Mama?” Eddie asked as politely as he could.

His mother sat there in her reclining chair, where she always sat. She had her two end tables on either side of her, stacked high with medicines, books, food, drinks. All the supplies she needed in her nest. She smiled faintly at him, squinting in his direction through her thick glasses. She was going blind from the diabetes. Her feet would start to go next. Eddie thought all this with a cold dispassion that scared him.

“Did you have a good day at work?”

“Yes, Mama,” Eddie replied. “I finished up everything I needed to before my work trip.”

His mother sighed loudly. “Another one? Eddie, they make you go on those too much. You should tell them, you have your sick mother to take care of, you can’t spend so much time away-”

“You’ll have a nurse,” Eddie reminded her, even as he realized it himself. He had scheduled it, back in Derry, last time. He always scheduled a nurse to stay with her when he’d be out of town, next. His Derry-self thought of everything. His Derry-self was a man with a plan, who could handle every complication of Eddie’s dream life with ease. Eddie was jealous of him.

“Those nurses always steal from me.”

“No they don’t, Mama,” Eddie sighed. “Sorry, I’ve got to pack.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek and ignored whatever she called after him as he headed into his bedroom. He shut and locked the door behind him.

Eddie got the stepstool out from the side of his closet, unfolding it and setting it in front of the back row of shelving. Climbing up it, he pulled the safe out from behind the shoeboxes and other sundries he tossed up there to keep it from his mother’s prying eyes. Not that she did much snooping these days, with her bad feet and failing eyesight.

Rather than rummaging around with his arms up Eddie pulled the safe down and sat with it on the floor of his closet. He ignored the pilled carpet (one day he’d move out of this place. He could afford it already, except he didn’t know how much his mother’s medical bills would cost, how long she would live for, if he would need to put her in a home…) and entered the combination to pop open the safe. Then he sat back on his heels and stared.

There were wads of cash inside. Tens and twenties, mostly. Just pieces of cash he’d squirreled away, not thinking about it, over the last six months. The airline tickets were in there too, like Mike said they would be. But the cash…

Suddenly Eddie remembered. He gasped, hands going up to cover his mouth. Then he cried.

Fifteen minutes later he had the cash counted out, and it amounted to almost ten grand. Eddie stacked it neatly and slipped it into an envelope, then folded up the envelope and shoved it into his slacks pocket. Hopefully he didn’t get fucking mugged, but he knew exactly where he was going and would have the money off him soon enough.

Grabbing his coat, Eddie slipped up behind his mother and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“I have an errand to run. Why don’t I pick us up some Italian on the way back? From Gino’s?”

Sonia smiled up at him, eyes faintly unfocused. “Oh, yes, Eddie. But get me the-”

“-Cream sauce, not the marinara,” Eddie confirmed. He smiled thinly at her. “The marinara gives you heartburn.”

“That’s my good boy,” Sonia smiled.

As soon as Eddie had his back turned he let his face fall. One evening with her and then he’d be out of here. Back in Derry.

Eddie stood in the jewelry shop, sweating in his wool coat. He didn’t actually know Richie’s finger size, except in comparison to his. He’d have to take a guess and then get it resized later. There _were_ jewelers in Derry.

He explained to the jeweler that he was looking for a men’s wedding band—but not gold, something more masculine, less… bright?—and was shown some tungsten bands with inlaid diamonds that he could see Richie wearing. When he asked for two, in two different sizes, the clerk gave him a look, but he didn’t offer an explanation and the clerk didn’t ask him for one.

It didn’t eat up the entirety of the nine and a half grand he had, burning a hole in his pocket, but almost. Eddie pocketed the extra and thought about what the nicest restaurant in Derry was. Or should he do something more personal? Where could they go together in Derry that held only good memories, no bad ones? Was there such a place? Somewhere the clown-

 _The clown_.

Eddie gasped, falling against a building on the street. He fumbled in his pockets, feeling the ring boxes, feeling the money, no, no, that wasn’t what he needed-

Inside coat pocket. Inhaler. Eddie took two deep, wheezing puffs on the inhaler and felt his airways open. Except it was a placebo, wasn’t it? Except, it worked, didn’t it? Eddie breathed shakily and leaned against the brick wall, ignoring the grime for once as he breathed and breathed and breathed.

The fucking clown. He’d _forgotten_. How could he have forgotten about the fucking clown? That was the reason for the memory whammy, that was the whole- that was _everything_. But it only came back to him now.

Shakily Eddie slipped the inhaler back into his coat pocket, then checked to make sure the ring boxes were still safe. He ignored the dirty looks of his fellow New Yorkers who were hurrying past him as he straightened back up, brushed himself off.

His mother was still up, waiting for him in her same chair when Eddie walked back into their apartment.

( _Their_ apartment. That was his and his _mother’s_. Eddie never wanted a “their” with his mother, a “we.” The only “their” he wanted was _his and Richie’s_. “Their” apartment they’d spent six months shopping for, “their” restaurant they went to every Saturday, “their” lives together, forever.)

After setting the take-out bags down on the kitchen counter Eddie dutifully returned to the living room to give his mother a kiss on the cheek. She smiled up at him.

Eddie hated her so much.

How did he not _know_ he hated her? How could he _possibly_ go through his life, day in and day out, and not realize how terrible she was, how sick she made him, how much he resented her for his life, his fears, his everything.

“Tomorrow we can-” Sonia started, and Eddie knew what she was doing. Remembered now that she did this every time.

“I have that work trip tomorrow, Mama. Remember?”

Sonia looked over at him with quivering chins. “Oh, Eddie. Are you sure you need to go? Can’t they, what they do with computers, can’t they do something over the internet? Or over the phones? I don’t see why you need to fly. It’s so unsafe, and those planes are disgusting. Did you see the report _Dateline_ did on the tray tables? And the seatback pockets?”

“I have my pocket hand sanitizer Mama.”

Sonia wrung her hands together. “Your office has started making you fly so _much_. And after 9/11?”

“Air travel is still much safer than driving,” Eddie pointed out, barely hearing himself. It was an old argument, it was an argument they had every time. He was just going through the motions until he finished his tasteless meal and could go to bed.

He had a cellphone, now. He wondered if he could give Richie a call when he was in bed, after Sonia went to sleep. But, that was just tempting fate, wasn’t it? They’d see each other in less than twenty-four hours. Before dinner tomorrow they’d be in each other’s arms again, in bed together, Richie fucking his brains out-

“Eddie? _Eddie!_ ”

“ _What_?!” Eddie cleared his throat and forced his expression neutral. “Mama?”

Sonia was glaring at him, or, even worse than that: she was _staring_ at him. Like she was _suspicious_ or something. Eddie schooled his face into a more placid expression and stopped thinking about Richie. They’d see each other soon enough. No point risking it by putting the cart before the horse.

Finally, after a long, hard look, Sonia nodded at Eddie. “If you’re going to abandon me tomorrow, could you at least do my nails, Eddie? Before that judgmental nurse comes tomorrow.”

“Of course, Mama.”

Eddie stood up from the couch and went to get the supplies.

One last evening. One last evening, and then he was free.

For one week.

* * *

Eddie left the note on his pillow, because it didn’t seem very romantic to walk to the place _together_. Maybe it was, but. Eddie wanted to get it all just right, and didn’t want to get Mike involved with all this, because, well. So he made some excuse while they were supposed to be helping out Mike with research, begging off with a bad stomach. He told Richie he’d see him back at the Inn. _Hopefully_ that gave him a couple hours, at least, but knowing Richie it could be as little as thirty minutes. Eddie showered and dressed as fast as he could, then left the note. He booked it across town and started setting up, hoping Richie stayed occupied enough with Mike that he’d have _some_ time to set up.

Luckily Mike must have been more engaging than usual, or they’d immediately gotten off track and sat around drinking and making each other laugh, because Eddie had _just_ enough time to get everything in place before he heard the front door to the abandoned Aladdin creak open. He waited, casting a last critical eye over his work, as heavy footsteps moved through the arcade and concessions lobby, until they were at the door to the theater.

“ _Eddie_?” Richie’s voice whispered through the dark. “ _Eddie? You in here_?”

“I’m here,” Eddie called out, then bit his lip.

Richie started down the aisle, then stopped. For a split second Eddie thought Richie was going to turn tail and run. But instead of running away, Richie stumbled forward, then started to jog, then run. He slammed into Eddie and grabbed his face, glasses reflecting the candlelight around them.

“What did you do?” Richie gasped out, already crying.

“Nothing yet. Let me go so I can do it,” Eddie told him. Nonsensically Richie shook his head before pulling Eddie in for a blistering kiss. Eddie kissed back, knees going weak, but he had a _plan_ , and a _speech_ , and he wasn’t going to let Richie distract him. Not for long, at least.

When Richie pulled back to breathe Eddie pushed him gently away. Just far enough that Eddie could get down on one knee. A fresh bout of crying overtook Richie and he started to walk away, one hand shoved up under his glasses to cover his eyes. Then he turned around and walked back, staring down at Eddie.

“Richie,” Eddie started, and Richie fell to his knees with him. The rose petals Eddie had scattered across the floor of the Aladdin scattered under his legs.

“Yes, fuck, yes-”

“It’s just the rings,” Eddie warned him. “It’s not anything official. I’m not saying we can go to Mass-”

“Okay, okay,” Richie agreed, fumbling his hand out so Eddie could slide the ring over his finger.

“I thought we could keep them here. In a safe deposit box,” Eddie explained. “Then we wouldn’t accidentally get rid of them or trigger the memories or anything when we’re out.”

Richie was nodding, but Eddie wasn’t sure he was hearing him. He was focused on the ring on his finger, staring at it like he couldn’t believe this was real, like he knew he was dreaming and was going to wake up any minute now. Then he swept forward to kiss Eddie again, consuming him, trying to swallow up everything that was Eddie, everything that was Richie, until they were just left with EddieandRichie, RichieandEddie, R+E.

“Wait, wait,” Eddie pushed back. He smiled, cupping Richie’s cheek in his hand. “You’re not letting me make the speech, you dick.”

“I don’t want you to make the speech,” Richie whined, trying to kiss Eddie’s protests away. “You’ll just make me cry.”

“You’re already crying,” Eddie pointed out.

“And you want to make me cry _more_ , you fucking _asshole_ ,” Richie accused.

“Richie.” Eddie grabbed his hands and held them. Richie met his eyes with a whimper. “I love you. Wholly and completely.”

“ _Noooo_ ,” Richie moaned. He squirmed forward and kissed Eddie, even with his hands trapped in their laps. “Please, Eddie. I call uncle.”

“I love you with the best parts of me,” Eddie continued, heedless to Richie’s sobbing. He kissed Richie’s hair and pressed his lips to his ear. “I love you when I’m brave.”

Richie sobbed into his neck. Relenting, Eddie pulled back and reached up to brush the tears from Richie’s cheeks. His glasses were all fogged up, but Eddie knew he would want to keep them on for this part.

“I promise to love you forever,” Eddie swore. “Even when I forget. Your name is written inside of me. On the secret, best parts of my soul.”

“I love you always,” Richie swore. “Even when I forget. I love you, Eddie. I love you, you fucking jerk, making me cry, stealing _my_ idea—this was _my_ idea, you know-”

“I was saving money the whole time,” Eddie told him. “I didn’t even know I was doing it. But I was putting money away every week, and then when Mike called suddenly I _remembered_. I knew why I was doing it. It was for you. Even when I forgot, I loved you.”

Richie groaned and grabbed Eddie’s face, pushing him back onto the grimy theater floor. Then he pulled back. “I didn’t get you a ring.”

“Oh, I got myself a matching one.” Eddie pulled out the other box with the much smaller sized ring and showed him. Richie took it out with shaking hands and held it between thumb and index finger.

“Eddie…”

Eddie grinned and held out his hand. “You don’t have to make a speech.”

Richie trembled as he slipped the ring over Eddie’s finger. “Good because I’m just gonna-” his voice cracked, and Richie waved a hand at his face. Then he settled himself on top of Eddie and kissed him harder.

“Richie, we can’t-” Eddie tried to protest. “Not _here_.”

“Yes we can, yes we can,” Richie whispered, lowering Eddie to somehow simultaneously sticky and dusty floors of the theater. Eddie had to slide a couple candles back to clear a space, rose petals scattering around them.

“Richie, ugh, no, it’s gross-”

“We’ll go back to the Inn and shower,” Richie promised him.

Eddie shoved Richie backwards and climbed on top of him. He scrambled to undo his belt and drop his pants. “If you don’t mind it then _you_ should be the one getting twenty-year-old popcorn butter ground into his ass,” Eddie pointed out. Richie gazed up at him adoringly, hands already settled on Eddie’s hips.

“Okay,” Richie said dumbly.

Eddie tapped at his chest. “Well then get undressed, moron.”

“Hey! I’m your _husband_ now,” Richie whined. But he was grinning wide enough to split his face as he started to push down his jeans.

Eddie settled his elbows on Richie’s chest, batting his eyelashes at him. “Well then get undressed, oh stupid husband of mine.”

“Fuck I love you,” Richie groaned, leaning up to drag Eddie down into a kiss.

“Shit, I don’t have any stuff,” Eddie pointed out. Because he hadn’t planned on them fucking on the floor of the Aladdin—stupidly, he’d thought them more civilized than that.

Shoving shame somewhere deep in his stomach, Eddie snorted up mucus from the back of his throat and spit into his hand. As he wrapped the hand around both their dicks and started stroking, he risked a glance up at Richie’s face. Richie was staring up at him, wide-eyed behind his glasses and adoration pouring from his every cell. 

“I love you,” Richie announced, like Eddie couldn’t _see_ it, plain as the glasses on Richie’s nose. 

But he mustered up some of that courage Richie was always saying he had. As he stroked their dicks, abs twitching with arousal, he met Richie’s eyes and declared: “I love you, too.”

Richie beamed up at him. Then he reached up and looped a hand around the back of Eddie’s neck, pulling him down into a kiss. Their cocks rubbed wetly over each other, precome easing the way. 

“You say you love me like you’re going into battle,” Richie told him. 

“Every day is a fucking battle with you,” Eddie said back, to ignore the truth of what Richie was saying. 

“Every day with you is a late night with good booze and Adult Swim reruns,” Richie whispered back at him. 

It was the most romantic thing Richie could have ever said to him. Eddie pulled away, unable to look at that. He jerked their dicks hard, pausing to spit again in his hand. Richie’s hips jerked up at that. He squeezed one of his ridiculously oversized hands over Eddie’s hip. Arousal shot through Eddie, stomach twitching as he rode his hips a little faster against Richie’s. 

“This is your engagement present from me,” Eddie told him. “I’m not doing anything kinkier, like eating you out.”

“I’m going to eat you out the second we’re back at the Inn,” Richie declared.

“Ungh…” Eddie tried to force out the word _gross_ but his dick had jumped with excitement, and he knew Richie would call him out on it if he said he didn’t want it.

“Maybe I’ll fuck you first,” Richie suggested, eyes glinting dangerously now behind his glasses. Eddie scowled at him, knowing what he was doing, but, fuck, he was kinda into it. “Fill you up with my come and then eat you out.”

“I’m not letting you come inside me,” Eddie told him.

“Yeah but what if I promise to clean it all out of you afterwards. No mess.”

“That’s gross,” Eddie breathed, humping into his own hand, thighs clenching around Richie’s ribs. “You’re gross.”

“Trashmouth,” Richie reminded him.

Leaning down, Eddie pressed a sweet, slow kiss to said trashy mouth. “Husband,” Eddie whispered.

Richie whimpered and came, tears jumping out behind his glasses, magnified and terribly on display. “ _Eddie_ ,” Richie whined.

Eddie bit his lip as he jerked himself harder, way smoothed by Richie’s jizz. “Say it,” Eddie told him. “Say it back.”

Reaching a shaking hand up—his left hand, Eddie realized, his left hand with their _wedding ring_ on it—Richie first cupped Eddie’s cheek, then combed it through his hair. Then he pressed his pinky and ring finger against Eddie’s lips. Eddie took the fingers into his mouth, sucking them down. He felt the ring push past his lips, tungsten smooth, diamonds rough. Then Richie pushed in further and Eddie could taste the cold metal on his tongue, the sharp edges of the diamonds. Eddie moaned.

Richie stared up at Eddie, tears tracking down his cheeks. “You’re my husband,” he finally croaked, broken. “Eddie Kaspbrak. I love you. I’ll-” his voice broke but he pushed on, “-I’ll love you forever.”

Eddie’s fist flew over the head of his dick until he was coming, moaning around Richie’s fingers through his orgasm. He felt tears threatening at his own eyes but he pushed them down, swallowed them hard. Richie was the crier of the two of them, after all. Richie slipped his fingers from Eddie’s mouth just to reach down and jerk his dick, squeezing the last few drops of come out of him.

Eddie leaned down to kiss Richie one more time, come and spit sliding over their stomachs and softening dicks. Richie wrapped his arms around Eddie’s back, sighing softly as he appeared to be ready to drift off into a little cat nap, cuddled up with Eddie lying on top of him. But Eddie pulled back quickly and stood up. He kicked Richie lightly to cover up the surge of affection that filled his chest at the sight of Richie Tozier, sex-mussed, covered in spit and come, splayed out on the disgusting floor of the _Aladdin_ with his dick handing out.

“Get the fuck up, c’mon. My ass isn’t going to eat itself.”

That got Richie (his _husband_ ) moving.

* * *

They lay in bed together that night, after a romantic dinner and Derry’s only decent restaurant, and Richie played with their hands together, lacing and unlacing their fingers, clacking their rings against each other as he did. Eddie’s stomach flip-flopped as he watched the proceedings, bare shoulder pressed up against Richie’s, thighs tangled together under the covers.

He wished they could leave this town together like this.

He wished he could wake up every day like this. Fall asleep every night like this.

He wished this was his life, every day. Instead of fourteen days a year.

He wished Richie was actually his husband. That they were actually running off together to get married. Even if it was only in one state, or two, even if it was called a _civil union_ , or whatever the hell, Eddie wished… Eddie _wished_.

But at the same time as he _wished_ , Eddie also _reasoned_. He’d always been good at worrying, and what came with good worrying was overthinking. And when he overthought, he figured things out.

Like how Richie hadn’t asked him this time if he’d slept with anyone else in the interim. Hadn’t asked the last couple times, actually. Richie hadn’t talked about not knowing he was gay, in the world outside of Derry.

Which meant Richie had figured it out. And started doing something about it.

They used condoms, because they always used condoms when Richie fucked Eddie, because Eddie hated the mess. He thought it was disgusting to have come dripping out of his asshole, just… slowly leaking around, getting all over the sheets, all night long. And Richie never really complained about it, even though Eddie would understand if he did. But now he never said even one word about it, even a token protest. When they’d fucked in the Aladdin Richie had talked dirty about coming inside Eddie. But then when they sprawled together in bed after their romantic engagement dinner, Richie had reached for the box of condoms without a word against them.

They didn’t have to talk about it. Richie wasn’t doing it on _purpose_ —nothing they did in the outside world could be considered on _purpose_. Not when they only had half their memories, half their personalities to work with. Or at least Eddie kept reassuring himself.

Because, the fact was, Eddie didn’t have a problem with Richie fucking other guys when they forgot each other. What Eddie had a problem with was that Richie’s other self had figured it _out_. That he had _done_ something about it.

Richie had been brave enough, even without remembering his childhood, his friends, defeating It, to acknowledge that he was gay and start fucking other men.

Eddie’s other self had no idea.

Eddie’s dream self was still a virgin, living with his mother, using that as his excuse for not dating. He was telling himself he could never bring a girl home to Sonia, so he wasn’t even looking. And since he wasn’t looking, he wasn’t examining what he liked, what he didn’t liked. He just figured Sonia would die, and then he’d be free, and his life would turn around and he’d meet an incredible girl and settle down.

He thought Sonia was the problem. He had no idea he was carrying the problem around inside of him, like a cancer. Growing larger and consuming more and more of him with every passing month.

“Hey,” Richie whispered. He knocked his leg over Eddie’s. “Brain.”

“Pinky,” Eddie whispered back, then giggled. Richie whined and kicked him.

“Stop thinking.”

“Fuck you, I’m not thinking, I’m just lying here.”

“You’re thinking,” Richie asserted, confident. He released Eddie’s hand, but it was only to roll over. “Hold me?”

And that was enough. Right now, in this moment. Eddie rolled onto his side and wrapped Richie up in his arms, face pressed to the back of Richie’s broad shoulders. He tried not to think. He wasn’t very good at it, but he thought, maybe. If he had the chance. He could get better. If he had the _time_.

* * *

They were curled up at Mike’s place, research abounding and some movie they’d stopped paying attention to a half hour ago (a Spider-Man movie, apparently; it wasn’t bad) on the TV as they ate and drank and absolutely ripped apart Bill’s latest book.

“Oh holy shit, do you see this? The guy is terrified of suffocating to death because he got locked in a fridge at the dump when he was a kid, and now the ironic twist is he’s going to…” Richie flipped through the pages, skimming the ending. He could always read faster and better than any of them, even Bill. He just didn’t care about it like Bill did. “Suffocate to death,” Richie finished. He looked over at Eddie. “That’s not even fucking ironic.”

Eddie shrugged. “It’s scary, though. Kind of.”

“It sounds like you, you know.”

“What?!”

Richie waved the book at Eddie. The pages rustled softly over the movie they’d turned down an hour ago. “Eds: it’s a guy who’s had a fear of not breathing his whole life and then is tormented by a monster that embodies that fear.”

Well sure, but you could make _anything_ sound relatable like that. “Stan had a fear of that creepy picture in his dad’s office and that’s what tormented him! Bill had a fear of losing Georgie and that’s what tormented him! Mike-” Eddie winced, glancing over at Mike. “Well. You know.”

Mike shrugged amiably, but his eyes were haunted. “It’s alright, Eddie. I get it.”

Richie quirked one eyebrow at Eddie, and Eddie wished he wasn’t so damned attractive when he did that. “But _your_ fears manifest through your aspirator, Eddie my dear.”

That was all true, and Richie was probably right—Bill probably _had_ drawn upon some subconscious memory of Eddie for this particular character, or plot, or whatever. But Eddie was too busy focusing on something else already; something he hadn’t thought to ask in the years they’d been doing this, since they remembered. Something he had never _dared_ ask when they were kids, either because he took Richie at his word, or because he had been too scared of the answer.

“Wait. What did you ever see?” Eddie asked him. “You always said you never saw anything that summer. But you must have, right?”

And just like that, Eddie had performed his very own miracle: he made Richie clam up.

Eddie and Mike shared a look. Richie might be quicker on his feet and with his mouth than Eddie could ever hope to be (sometimes it made Eddie feel slow and stupid, even in spite of how much his brain was always racing, anxiety-ridden as it was; even in spite of how successful he was at his job, how much money he was making already, not even out of his twenties…) but sometimes Eddie got in a good lick of his own. Not often, but enough.

On the television Spider-Man was fighting against a shockingly good-looking Doc Ock—Eddie did _not_ remember the bowl-cut villain from the comics being Alfred Molina level handsome—as Richie refused to meet Eddie’s eyes and instead played with the hem of his shirt. It was a hideous shirt—the older Richie got the uglier his shirts got, probably because he was buying them himself—with Poochie the Dog on it telling kids it was cool to smoke.

Finally Richie huffed and dragged a hand through his hair. “I guess it doesn’t fucking matter, right? Not anymore.”

Before Eddie could ask what he meant, Richie went on to explain:

“It was, uh. I always figured it was a dream. I… I thought it was a dream.”

“Richie?” Eddie prompted, softly.

“It was after you broke your arm.”

Richie said it like it was an apology, only Eddie wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for.

“I was playing in the arcade, you know. St- St-”

Richie sounded like Bill, stuttering over the word, unable to force it out. It was with a sudden shock of unreality that Eddie realized Richie was trembling. Richie was _scared_. They’d seen each other scared, of course: they’d all seen each other scared. But Richie scared wasn’t trembling, stuttering silence. Richie scared was screaming and hurling insults and talking, talking, talking, because the boy could never _shut up_ when he was scared. Now Richie was lapsing into silence because his mouth was failing him, and Eddie had never seen anything more terrifying.

Jumping up from the couch, Eddie joined Richie on Mike’s old lazy boy. It was too small for two fully-grown men (no matter what Richie said about Eddie’s size), but Eddie squeezed in, sitting half in Richie’s lap. Richie curled up against him, pressing his face to Eddie’s chest as Eddie soothed him with steady strokes of his palm against Richie’s back. Worriedly Eddie met Mike’s eyes over the top of Richie’s curls, but Mike just shrugged. He didn’t know what this was about, either.

“Richie, hey. You don’t have to. I was just asking.”

“No, no.” Richie lifted his head. His eyes were wet, but Eddie or Mike wasn’t going to say boo about it. He met Mike’s eyes and lifted his chin defiantly—a move that was more Eddie than Richie, but maybe they were wearing off on each other. “The stupid fucking clown. It. It’s strong when we’re separated, right? When we keep secrets. When we’re afraid.”

Mike nodded reluctantly, but he was quick to add: “We’ve got years, Richie. If you’re not ready-”

“No, fuck him, no!” Richie grabbed Eddie’s arm and looked up at him. His cheeks were wet, his eyes were red. But his expression was fully of so much _love_ , so much _adoration_ , that it made Eddie’s chest clench and throat tight. “I’m going to say it. Because if I say it, then the fucking clown doesn’t have any power over me, right?”

If only it was that easy. Eddie touched the inhaler in his pocket. “That’s not always true,” he pointed out, gently. “Just because you acknowledge it, just because you do what you know you’re supposed to do, it doesn’t make the fear go away. Anymore than if you see a cut, you wash it, and you put a Band-Aid on it. It’s not all better an hour later. Healing takes time.”

“But the first step is to see it, wash it, and put the Band-Aid on, right?”

Eddie smiled softly down at Richie. “Sure. First steps.”

“First steps,” Richie repeated, determined glint in his eye. He looked over at Mike and exhaled shakily. “Okay: first steps. Hey, Mike?”

“Yeah Richie?” Mike asked, wry smile on his face.

“I’m…” Richie shook in Eddie’s arms. Eddie rubbed his back through it. Richie’s head fell. “Fuck, why’s it so fucking hard, why’s it so _fucking hard_ , you already _fucking know,_ you _know_ , I know you know, I can’t-”

“Rich-” Eddie started, but Richie shook his head.

“No, no. I can. I can fucking-” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Mike: I’m- I- I like- I…” Richie breathed hard. “I’m- I’mgay.”

Mike’s eyes flickered over to Eddie, wry smile still on his face. His eyebrows creased in a moment of confusion before nodding softly. “It’s okay, Richie. Thanks for telling me.” He looked at Eddie again, like _yeah?_ But he didn’t say anything.

Richie breathed shakily and grabbed for Eddie’s hand. Eddie let him, and Richie grabbed his left hand, bringing Eddie’s ring up to his lips and kissing it fiercely.

“It’s so fucking scary,” Richie growled. “It shouldn’t be so fucking scary! But I feel like… I feel like…”

“Like it’s still real,” Eddie told him. “Even though your brain knows it’s not.”

“Yeah!” Richie looked at him excitedly. Then his expression dropped. “Yeah.”

“It’s habit, Richie,” Eddie pointed out. “It’s fucking… if there’s a word for like, the reverse of cognitive behavioral therapy. Or maybe it’s just cognitive behavioral therapy, but like, for bad stuff instead of good stuff. It’s why I can’t stop using the fucking inhaler, when I’m here. Every fucking day I’m outside of this town, every day I don’t remember, I engage in the behavior of sucking on the stupid placebo bullshit, every time I feel anxious. And I think it’s real, right? So I form this habit, I connect all these neural pathways or whatever the fuck in my head. And then when I’m here, even though I _remember_ it’s a placebo, even though I _know_ it, those pathways are like… they’re like…”

Mike offered the words: “They’re well-trodden ground. A clear footpath through the tall grass.”

Eddie waved a hand out at Mike. “Exactly! Exactly. So then I feel anxious, here, because fuck, when do I not, and then my brain is like ‘hey, it’s inhaler time, Eddie.’ And even though I _know_ it’s fake, I can’t fix it, it’s one week, one week of knowing versus twenty-five weeks of not knowing! And how am I supposed to fight that, Richie?”

“You can’t,” Richie assured him.

“Exactly!” Eddie slapped Richie over the head, drawing a small “Ow!” and smile out of him. Eddie smiled back, and noticed that Richie had stopped trembling. He bet Richie hadn’t even noticed yet. “I can’t. And if I can’t, you can’t, either. So it’s okay, Richie: it’s okay you’re still scared. I’m still scared. The forgetting means we can’t stop being scared.” He glanced over at Mike. “Until we kill It. Once and for all.”

“Your arm was broken,” Richie whispered. He peered down at Eddie’s arm, running his hand over Eddie’s unblemished skin, tickling over his dark arm hair. It hadn’t been a compound fracture, so there was nothing to see. No mark left visible to indicate the trauma that had happened that summer. Richie glanced back up at Eddie. “I was lonely.”

Eddie snorted at the guilt in Richie’s eyes. “What, did you cheat on me?”

“Wait, you guys were together back then?”

Richie snorted at Mike’s confusion. “No, fuck. No, not until the second time we came back here together.”

“Why’d you call Eddie, then?” Mike asked. “I always wondered.”

“Because I couldn’t call Stan.”

Mike nodded. A heavy silence filled the room. Stan. They still needed a plan to deal with Richie’s hunch about Stan.

“I was playing at the arcade,” Richie continued. “Street Fighter.” Richie shuddered, like he was remembering something terrible. “Bowers had a cousin in town. Connor. I didn’t know he was a Bowers. We were playing together.”

Eddie frowned down at Richie. “Holy shit, you really did cheat on me.”

“Don’t be like that, baby,” Richie teased. But his eyes flickered to Mike, and the humor was forced. It was amazing, how he could make those jokes all day long as long as no one thought they were true. But now that Mike knew, it wasn’t so funny anymore. Richie ducked his head and forced himself to continue.

“Bowers thought I was getting too chummy with his cousin. Called me a fag, chased me out.” Richie glanced up at Eddie, and his heart broke to see the pain in Richie’s eyes. “He was right. I was. And I was thinking about it. Like, we were having a good time, his shoulder brushed mine, our hands touched. I thought… you know… _maybe_ …”

“You were thirteen,” Eddie reminded him kindly. “You just wanted someone to kiss behind the bleachers. That’s not wrong.”

“Even if I wasn’t trying to kiss you?” Richie teased, but it was hollow. Eddie snorted.

“We were _thirteen_. I didn’t even know I liked boys.”

“I knew.”

“Yeah, well, your balls dropped before mine.”

Richie grinned up at him, more genuine this time, and shot him a wink. “Aw, don’t feel so bad, Eddie-my-love. Yours came in eventually. Right in the nick of time, in fact.”

“Shut the fuck up and tell us what you saw,” Eddie ordered him with a shove.

“Ran out. Hunkered down on a bench in front of the Paul Bunyan statue. And it…” Richie shuddered, gagged. “It chased me. Swung the axe around, you know. Whole nine.”

Mike squinted at Richie. Eddie noticed he was actually taking notes in a leather-bound, much-used book. “So the…” Mike thought about this for a second. “Did you have a crush on the Paul Bunyan statue?”

Richie scoffed and Eddie had to laugh at his indignation. Richie threw him right off the chair, but Eddie was laughing so hard he didn’t care. “I had a crush on _this_ asshole, but not _anymore_ ,” Richie shouted, glaring down at Eddie as he picked himself up from the floor.

“It was probably what it represented,” Mike mused. “Masculinity?”

“I don’t fucking know. You’d have to ask the clown,” Richie grumbled. “But, yeah. That was mine.”

Eddie picked himself up off the floor, wiping his eyes dry from laughing so hard. He pressed a kiss to Richie’s head, even as Richie squirmed, trying not to look at Mike. He shoved Eddie off him after a minute, even though Richie was never like that in private.

“Alright, whatever, we don’t need to give Mike a fucking _show_ ,” he grumbled. He scooped Bill’s book back up from the coffee table and thumbed to where he’d left off. “Now shut up, I want to see if award-winning author Mr. Denbrough has a character in this stupid book that’s a loveable rogue with rakish charm and a quick wit.”

“Why, you think Mike’s in there?” Eddie deadpanned.

He got a book thrown at his head for his wit, but it was worth it.

* * *

Summertime in Derry was only a half-season, at best. Warm and pleasant, humid, but never sweltering, and never dry heat. The worst it ever got was a touch muggy. It was nothing compared to the oppressive heat of New York during a heatwave, much less anywhere further south.

Eddie wondered what summers were like in Atlanta. Unbearable, probably. He wondered how Stan was dealing with it. Apparently well enough to keep living there. To _choose_ to live there in the first place. Maybe the birds were better there. Maybe he got to see them all migrate down from Derry during the winter, and that’s why he put down roots there.

It couldn’t possibly because they treated Jews better in the deep south. Eddie thought, not for the first time, that Stan should be living with him in New York. Maybe that they should switch, even: Stan could have his safe haven in New York amongst his people, and Eddie could live somewhere lower stress, genteel slowness and warm weather that made it impossible to be anxious.

Just thinking about it made the back of his neck itch. Okay: so maybe the deep south wasn’t for him.

The Derry Canal rose in front of them—or rather, it _sank_ before their vision: woods falling away to the side of the road in front of them, great concrete barriers of the canal coming into view. Richie, Eddie, and Mike stepped off the sidewalk into the brush, making their way to the concrete sides of the canal. There they sat, staring down at the canal water gurgling along peacefully below them. Richie picked up some stones and miraculously made them skip, even throwing down from up high like they were. Eddie tried to imitate him, but as usual he couldn’t compare to Richie.

“Just dump them straight down, why don’t you?” Richie grinned.

“Shut the fuck up, why don’t you?” Eddie shot back.

“Guys, come on. I thought we were going to talk about Stan.”

Richie picked up another pebble and hucked it horizontally down the canal. He managed to get two skips out of it before it sank below the waters.

“You can’t fucking call him,” Richie growled. “I can’t explain it. But this is all fucking magic anyway, right? And I’m telling you, I _know_ something bad is going to happen if you call him. I can feel it in my fucking _bones_.”

Eddie looked over at Richie, wondering what that must feel like. Not the certainty that something would go wrong—Eddie was plenty familiar with that. But to _not_ have that feeling _all the time_ , with _everything_ , and be able to listen to it when it _did_ appear because it was so unusual. Eddie thought maybe he had a bad feeling about calling Stan—but he thought he had a bad feeling about calling any of the Losers. He had a bad feeling about coming here, every time. He had a bad feeling about leaving, every time. He had a bad feeling leaving for work in the morning, and falling asleep at night.

It wasn’t even “a bad feeling.” It was exactly what Richie had said: a _certainty_. A _knowing_ , in his _bones_ , that something bad was going to happen. He _knew_ every time he set foot on a plane it was going to crash, or get hijacked (thank you, 9/11). He _knew_ every time he drove to work he was going to get into a wreck. He _knew_ every time he laid down at night that he would die in his sleep.

What must it be like, to be Richie, and have only _one_ of those knowings, so you could be sure of it, because of the absence of all the others?

“I hear you, Richie,” Mike reassured him. They all could hear the ‘but’ coming, and Richie skipped three more rocks in quick succession as he waited for it. “But when It comes back, we have to be together. All of us. The lucky seven. Or we won’t be able to defeat it.”

“What do you think is going to happen?” Eddie asked Richie, watching his face. When Richie lifted his head, Eddie’s jaw clenched. “What’s he going to do, Richie?”

“You know what he’s going to do,” Richie gritted out. “Stan won’t be able to face it. And he’s going to do… whatever it takes, to not.”

“Fuck,” Eddie whispered. Alongside him, Mike nodded solemnly.

Eddie jumped to his feet. “ _FUCK!_ ” he screamed, voice echoing over the canal. He chucked his handful of pebbles into the stream, kicked at the dirt. He ran over to a fucking tree and hit it, hard, with the flat sides of his fists. He beat it until his hands bled, scratched apart by the bark. Richie had jumped up to stop him but Eddie squirmed away from him, because he wanted to be allowed to rage. He wanted to fucking _feel it_ , to _scream_ , to _mourn_ , because it felt like all he was allowed to do in these few days he spent in Derry every year was be _happy_ , because he had Richie, because they both had Mike, but sometimes he just wanted to scream _and scream and scream_.

Eddie sat down on the dew-damp grass, panting heavily. He stared up at Mike from bloodshot eyes.

“We’re going to fucking save him,” he told Mike. “We’re not going to give him the choice.”

Mike spread his hands carefully, like he was dealing with a wounded animal. Good. Eddie felt like a wounded animal, and wanted to be treated appropriately. “I’m open to suggestions,” Mike told them. “But we need to bring him back. Complete the circle. We can’t just ignore him.”

“What if we went in person?” Richie said suddenly. His eyes were on Eddie the whole time, so it was obvious who the “we” was.

“We’ll forget,” Eddie pointed out, feeling stupid even as he did it.

“We’ve never left together.”

It felt like an accusation. Richie winced like he realized that too late.

“I mean, we don’t know,” Richie started again. “We can write letters to ourselves. Leave together. Fuck, handcuff ourselves together if we need to. We can make ourselves remember.”

“I’ve got a cell,” Eddie pointed out. “Mike could stay on the line with us the whole time. Make us remember who we are.”

“Well, not on the plane,” Richie reminded him. Then he grinned, lopsided. “We could go fucking _Memento_ on it: tattoo it on our arms, on our chests. Explain the whole fucking thing to ourselves on our skin so we don’t forget.”

“I’m not getting a fucking tattoo.” Eddie picked at the grass, just to have something to do with his hands. “But we could sharpie it on ourselves. We’d look like fucking idiots, but…”

“It’d be worth it,” Richie reminded him.

“Yeah. Yes, fuck, of course it would be worth it,” Eddie agreed.

“Are you sure?” Mike asked them. “It’s a big risk.”

“Are you sure you have to call Stan back?” Richie replied. Mike’s face said everything. “Then we’re sure. We’ll do it.” He glanced over at Eddie. “For Stan.”

There were too many variables. A million ways it could go wrong. And at the end of it all, there was no guarantee that they’d be able to stop _whatever_ monstrous fate Richie was cared of befalling Stan. They may very well be victims in a Greek tragedy, hastening their friend’s awful demise in their rush to save him from it. But if there was a chance, any chance at all, that they could help Stan, of course Eddie was all in to take it.

“For Stan.”

* * *

It was time to leave. Eddie tried to sneak out, but Richie had started to catch on to Eddie’s tricks, and he woke up as Eddie tried to slip from the bed, groggy arm flopping out from beneath the covers to grab at Eddie, drag him back to him.

“Richie. Richie, fuck off. I’m going to miss my flight.”

“No you’re fucking not your flight isn’t until noon,” Richie grumbled. He shoved his nose into Eddie’s neck, pulling him in close. Eddie sighed and wrapped his arms around Richie, pressing his face to his somehow simultaneously greasy _and_ dry curls.

“Richie…”

“Fuck you,” Richie whispered into his neck. “It’s going to be another six months. You can give me five minutes.”

Even though he was right, and even though he was saying it to get Eddie to _stay_ , the contrarian inside him pulled away, putting distance between them. Richie seemed to already know he had miscalculated, but he glared up at Eddie from his pillows, lazy left eye squinting nearly closed.

“Nothing has changed.”

“ _We could change it_.”

“We’re not going to _remember each other_ ,” Eddie told him. “Even if we left together, we’d still forget-”

“You don’t _know_ that because you’ve never even fucking _tried_ -”

“-and none of it changes the fact that my _mother_ is still alive. You want to come live with us? In our two-bedroom apartment in Ozone park?”

“I would if you asked me.”

Eddie leapt up from the bed, unwilling to be under the same sheets as the person he was having this argument with. He paced over to the bathroom, realized he was in his boxer shorts—Richie’s boxer shorts, fuck, he was in _Richie’s_ boxers—and stomped over to his suitcase where he’d laid out today’s change of clothes the night before. He turned his back on Richie as he tugged off the boxers and tried to slip into his briefs as fast as he could.

“Is this supposed to be a punishment or an invitation?”

“Shut up, Richie,” Eddie snapped. He pulled on his slacks and dress shirt before turning around. “I don’t want to have this argument again.”

Something in Richie’s face snapped at that. He jumped up from the bed, stalking over to Eddie in his boxer shorts as Eddie fumbled with his zipper.

“Again? _Again_?”

Eddie scowled as he struggled to button up his dress shirt. Fuck, how was he supposed to do this without looking away from Richie?

“Again, Eddie?” Richie was right in front of him now, towering over him—fuck him and all his stupid fucking height, he didn’t have to grow up so fucking _tall_ , like he was _bragging_ about it. What right did Richie _Tozier_ , of all fucking people, have to grow up tall _and_ have a big dick? There was no justice in the universe, there really wasn’t.

“What the fuck do you want me to say?”

Richie actually looked _down_ at Eddie, tears gleaming in his eyes. “We never had this argument the _first time, Eddie_!”

“You know what I think, I know what you think, what the fuck is there to argue about-”

“No, no:” Richie stopped him with a hand up. “You don’t know what I think. You don’t know what I think because I’ve never fucking _said it,_ _Eddie_ , because I just _shut up and opened my mouth and sucked your dick like a good boy_.”

Eddie stalked into the bathroom, not wanting to hear this. Not able to hear this. His face was hot all over from the crude innuendo—not even innuendo, just flat out -endo. He hated when Richie made their lovemaking into something cheap and tawdry.

Eddie was a fucking soft momma’s boy. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. And usually, Richie kind of was, too. A romantic, at the least, who cried when Eddie proposed to him and whispered _I love yous_ the whole time they were having sex (when he wasn’t laughing and teasing Eddie about how slutty he looked) and nightmares that made him reach over for Eddie in the middle of the night, to comfort him, to let him be the little spoon while Eddie held him, and shushed him through the memories. That was who Richie was, usually, when he was with Eddie. He was loud and crass, too, but not when it came to… _them_. What they _did_ , here, secluded in Derry’s memory-bubble.

As Eddie brushed his teeth and then his hair, Richie appeared in the doorway behind him, scowling at his reflection in the mirror. Finally Eddie slammed the hairbrush down on the sink and turned around.

“ _What_?!”

“Five years,” Richie said, without hesitation. He’d been planning this, clearly. Working up the courage. Or maybe waiting to be mad enough. “It’ll be over five years, next time we see each other. And we love each other. And we want to be together. And every fucking time, we roll the dice that we never will be.”

“My mother is sick-”

“What if I get sick, Eddie? What if I get fucking AIDS, or hepatitis while I’m out there, fucking other guys?”

Eddie’s blood drained from his face. He took half a step towards Richie, who took a full step away.

“Richie… Don’t… Don’t fucking _say_ that, why would you fucking _say_ that-”

“Because I’m a fucking train wreck out there, Eddie! I’ve got no fucking self-preservation instinct, because I’m a closeted mess, because I’ve got no fucking friends, because I think I’m all alone in this fucking world and I’m making dumbass shock-jock jokes on the radio like I know what it’s like to smell a girl’s pussy. Eddie: I could fuck _all_ this up. Please, please: stop giving me the _chance_.”

“I’m not your fucking babysitter, Richie,” Eddie choked out. It wasn’t what he had meant to say. It wasn’t what he wanted to say. But no matter what Richie said, it _was_ the same argument. Richie knew his mother was still alive, but ailing. He knew what Sonia was like, knew they could never be together while she was alive. If they could remember, outside of Derry, maybe… but they couldn’t. They’d have to latch themselves together, at the hip, to have any chance at all. Which meant they’d have to live together. And that just wasn’t an option, yet. It would be! It would be, soon enough. But not _yet_.

Eddie looked down at his left ring finger, which was already bare. They’d stopped by the bank on Friday to drop them off in their safety deposit box together. Five days was all they would get with them, since they always came in on Sunday and left on Sunday. Five days of being “married” in every way but on paper. And one day, maybe, that could be their lives, too. All the time. But not yet.

“Well I’m not your walking dildo, lubed up and waiting, Eds!”

“Don’t call me Eds.”

“Well I’m not going to call you for dinner!”

They stood, panting, staring at each other. And then Eddie’s face screwed up, because he couldn’t help it, he couldn’t, and he started laughing. Richie’s face cracked and he followed soon after.

“ _What_?!” Eddie gasped.

“I don’t fucking know! They can’t all be zingers, Eddie! I’m… I’m fucking mad! I don’t know!”

“How the fuck do you even still have a job?”

“I’m getting better, you know.” Richie scuffed his foot, bit his lip. He looked so beautiful when he was like this: insecure, but hopeful. Looking for Eddie’s approval, that was probably what it was that Eddie found so appealing. So often it felt like Richie was pulling _him_ along, like Richie was the one with the big plans, big ideas, like Richie knew everything to do and how to do it, that Eddie treasured these few times when suddenly he felt their dynamic shift, and the power fall into Eddie’s hands.

Eddie took a step forward and pressed his hand to Richie’s elbow, causing him to glance up. “Yeah? Not going to be a shock-jock for much longer?”

Richie lifted and dropped one shoulder, but his eyes were twinkling. “Maybe. I’m doing some club work. Stand up. Getting some good press. Word is maybe some agents are starting to scout my shows.” His expression turned serious and he reached out, crossing his arm over Eddie’s to grab at his elbow, in return. “Eddie, if I start making it-”

“What, you? Trashmouth?”

But Eddie’s stomach was cold with the thought. He knew what Richie was saying. If he hit it big, made a few stupid fucking movies, became a famous comedian, then there was nothing holding him back. Richie could have anything he wanted on hand. Men, alcohol, drugs. And if Richie didn’t remember Eddie, didn’t remember who he _was_ …

“She’s sick,” Eddie repeated.

Richie’s face, which had just been hopeful, if not sad, fell and fell, until it hardened into something ugly. He let go of Eddie’s elbow and stalked away.

“Fine,” Richie grumbled, crawling back into the bed. “Whatever.”

Eddie wanted to go over there to him. To crawl into bed, to wrap his arms around Richie’s chest. To stay there, with him, for the rest of their lives. Or at least the rest of the morning.

But he had a plane to catch, and a life to forget. A life to return to. Silently, Eddie finished getting ready, packing up his toiletry bag and shoving it into his suitcase. He took one last look around the room, spotted Richie’s boxers he had stripped off on the floor. For a brief moment he considered taking them with him, tucking it into his suitcase or his pocket. But then, what? He gets on the plane, or gets home to unpack, and he finds another man’s underwear in his things? Would he remember Richie, and start the cycle of remembering early, only to forget again a day later? Would he _not_ remember, and just think that a strange pervert had shoved his underwear into Eddie’s things? Would he think he’d been drugged, he’d been raped, on this “business trip” he could never seem to remember the details of?

Eddie folded Richie’s boxers neatly and set them on the end of the bed. Richie didn’t turn around, and Eddie didn’t go over to him. He left the room with his suitcase and closed the door on Richie without a word of goodbye to his Derry-life.


	5. 2007, Age 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW, diabetes: There is a brief, 1-2 lines about Sonia's diabetes progressing, to the point that she's going blind and the doctors are discussing amputating her foot.
> 
> A/N: I started titling the chapters with ages/years so the progression of time is clearer.

The plane landed in Bangor and Richie turned his phone on, just like all the other passengers were doing. He noticed some of them had the fancy fucking iPhone thing, screens glowing bright, not a keyboard in sight. Richie sighed and flipped open his Motorola and waited as the tinny little screen lit up. An image flashed across the two-inch-by-two-inch screen, missed texts. He clicked on it and a conversation with his manager opened up, Steve’s picture at the top-

 _Eddie_. _Steve_.

Memories of his childhood flooded back, memories of a little boy screaming at him, laughing at him, squirming out of noogies from him. More recent memories, memories as a man, rushed in as those ones settled: memories of a man’s face, too heavy with worry lines for such a handsome young man, of five o’clock shadow, of tidily parted hair and neat little polos and… Richie’s head felt like it was splitting open. He fumbled his glasses off his face and pressed his fingers into his eyes. Steve, Steve… short, type-A, always shouting Steve, in his neat suits and tidy hair, with his dark eyes and-

A laugh erupted from Richie’s throat. And then another. After a moment they kept coming, he couldn’t stop them, a hysterical wave of laughter bubbling out from him uncontrollably. The passenger next to him, who had stood up as soon as the plane landed like a fucking goober, started to edge away from him. Richie ignored him and laughed and laughed and laughed.

He’d found Eddie. Out there, in Chicago. He’d been looking for him, subconsciously, the whole time they were apart. And now he’d _found_ him. He’d found him, and he’d made him his _fucking manager_.

Richie laughed until he cried, pressing the heel of his palm against his eyes, trying to bring himself under control. He still had to drive to Derry, from here. Subconsciously, Richie swiped his thumb over his ring finger. He blinked at the gesture, and more than that, at the sensation that there was something _missing_. Something there that was supposed to be. Richie held his left hand out in front of him and looked. And then he remembered.

He was still crying when they debarked. He didn’t bother replying to Steve. Shit could wait. And he was roaming, anyway.

* * *

Mike’s hugs were getting more painful the older they got. The guy was _big_ —bigger than Richie, and not just in height, although the height thing bothered Richie more than the breadth thing. Richie had always been a gangly kid, and his dad hadn’t filled out until Richie was like a teen, so he kind of figured he was up for the same basic mesomorphic journey. When Mike hugged Eddie he pretty much _enveloped_ the poor guy, which at least Richie could snicker at. Even if not much made him want to snicker, right now.

When Mike pulled back, it was just enough so he could grab both of them, shaking them by their arms lightly. Or not so lightly, in Eddie’s case.

“Hey guys! Were your flights down okay? You didn’t run into any trouble, right?”

Richie snorted and clasped Mike back on his shoulder, shaking him roughly. “Mike, my man: I tried my best, but it was all smooth sailings.”

“You flew?” Eddie asked, glancing over at him.

“Making money now, Eds. Jealous?”

Eddie blinked at him like the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. It probably hadn’t, knowing Eddie.

“No? That’s great, Richie.”

“Come on, come on,” Mike gestured at them. The hostess was trying to lead them to a table. “We can get you both up to speed over drinks.”

“You working regularly, then?” Eddie asked as they ran the gauntlet of tables with the hostess.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Stand up, or voice over work, or…”

“Yeah I’m a regular Billy West.”

Eddie frowned. “Who’s that?”

“Oh, and here.” Mike dug into his pocket before they sat down, then held out his hand. In his palm were their two wedding rings, overlapping each other. Richie’s noticeably bigger ring was on the bottom, Eddie’s lying over top of it. Eddie took his first, then Richie. They slipped them on, eyes meeting nervously.

They hadn’t _really_ talked, yet. Eddie had taken his customary “get the plane germs off me” shower and gotten changed, and Richie had gone down to the Inn bar to pregame and smoke. By the time Eddie was ready it was dinner time, and they walked over in relative silence together.

It was weird. They both knew it was weird. Things weren’t right between them. But how could anything be right when this was their fucking lives?

Mike didn’t seem to notice the tension between them, or if he did, he didn’t mention it. They settled into their table together at Derry’s third-nicest restaurant and Richie and Eddie lifted their menus in silence. Mike sat, with his hands folded over his menu, big smile on his face.

“You know, I’ve got some news to share with you guys. Something I’ve discovered. I think we have a real chance at stopping It.”

Richie rubbed his forehead with one hand. “Could we cool it for one night, Mike? I’d rather not think about my inevitable horrific demise in T-minus, oh, nine years, on the first day of my fucking vacation.”

“You call this a vacation?” Eddie snorted, not looking up from his menu.

“Well I don’t know what the fuck else to call it. Marriage counseling?” Richie snapped back. “Because if that’s what it is, I want my fucking money back.”

“What fucking money: I paid for the rings.”

“Oh so you _own me, now_?”

Mike tried to smile, eyes darting back and forth between them. “Hey, okay, no problem. We don’t have to talk about that. Uh…” Mike cast about for another topic of conversation. “Hey Richie: I saw you’ve got a six-city tour booked. Congrats, man.”

Eddie’s eyes flickered to Richie’s over the top of his menu. Richie buried his face in his menu, not wanting to think about it. Because if he thought about the tour, he’d think about his manager. And if he thought about his manager, he’d think about how, even when he was sleepwalking in the outside world, his subconscious managed to remember exactly his type, and was searching for an Eddie to fill the space in his life, even when he couldn’t remember such a person had ever existed.

And he couldn’t start think about that. Not right now.

Richie set his menu down, not having managed to read a single line of it. He stuck both elbows on the table and folded his hands over each other before resting his chin dramatically on his knuckles.

“So. Mikey. What’s new with the other sleepwalkers?”

Mike frowned for a second, like he didn’t know what Richie meant. Then his face cleared and he smiled.

“Oh. A lot. Ben’s got his first job as lead architect: nothing big, just an office building, but he’s pretty proud of it, I think. And I think he’s doing well in the field—he was in some trade magazines as a ‘rising talent,’ that sort of thing.”

Eddie’s menu lowered slowly, worry lines and big brown eyes appearing in dramatic succession. “He was always great with buildings. Plans.” Eddie glanced Richie’s way but managed to avoid meeting his eyes. “That’s great.”

“Bill’s got another book out, but he churns those out like a cow churns out shit.”

Eddie grimaced and shot Mike a reproachful look. “Nice dinner conversation.”

Mike shrugged, smiling easily. “Farm boy.” He continued: “Bev’s working at as a seamstress, somewhere pretty low rent. But she’s got some designs she’s been showing, on occasion one shows up on a catwalk. I think she’s due to break through any time now. Just needs to get the right person’s eyes on her work.”

“How’s Stan?” Richie whispered.

Mike looked him up and down, nodding slowly. “Stan’s good. Stan’s good. Him and Patty are doing great. Business is going strong.”

Richie nodded, grabbing at his water to guzzle it down. He wished it was something harder.

As if summoned by his very thought, the waitress came. Before she even finished introducing herself Richie held up two fingers. “Whiskey. Double. And make it two.”

She blinked but nodded, turning to Eddie with a smile wavering but still in place. Eddie was staring at Richie like he could puzzle him out.

“Gee and Tee,” Eddie ordered for himself.

“Fuck you’re an old fucking woman,” Richie grumbled.

“You don’t even fucking like whiskey, you just think it’s cool,” Eddie shot back.

“Don’t pretend you know what I like,” Richie snapped. “You’re not around enough to know.”

“Can I have a glass of the Moscato?” Mike asked, smiling awkwardly. The waitress nodded in relief and left, throwing the table into a tense silence. When she returned a few minutes later Richie downed half the first whiskey, trying his best to hide his grimace. Of course Eddie noticed it, and he grinned meanly into his Gee and Tee, maintaining eye contact with Richie the whole time. Fuck him. He didn’t _know_ Richie. He couldn’t. They didn’t spend enough fucking time together.

Eventually they ordered, and their food came, and it was still tense as fuck but Mike was managing to talk them, painful though it might be at times, through the basics of a human conversation. Just movies, TV, weather. Silence-filling bullshit.

Richie didn’t have much of an appetite, even though he was starving after a day spent on planes. Instead he twirled his whiskey glass on the table, watching the brown fluid slide along the sides of the glass. “You ever think that the reason we’re not successes like the others is because we keep coming back here?” Richie mused.

Eddie looked up from cutting his well-done (ugh) steak into a hundred of the tiniest pieces. “What do you mean? I’m a success.”

“You live with your mother.”

“She lives with me,” Eddie shot back. Then he rolled his eyes. “I make six figures. I’ve got a Roth and regular IRA. I max out my contributions every year, and my employer matches my 401k contributions.”

“I literally don’t know what any of that means.”

“It means I’m fucking set, Richie,” Eddie huffed. “I’m the youngest guy in my office doing what I do by a _long_ shot. I’ve got bigger contracts with insurance companies than guys who have been doing this twenty years. And that’s in New York. I’m improbably successful.”

Richie tossed his napkin down on the table and looked at Mike. “Well I guess that makes us the only genuine losers left, huh Mikey boy?”

Mike smiled softly at Richie, like he couldn’t believe how stupid he was. Which, okay, Richie was kind of used to being on the receiving end of that look. But also, still: ouch?

“Richie: you’ve got a six-city tour next month. You’re holding down a job in _comedy_.”

“Yeah but I can barely pay my rent after my manager takes his fucking cut.” Shit, don’t talk about Steve, he wasn’t ready to talk about Steve.

“But you took a plane out here,” Eddie pointed out. He was frowning, but softly. Like he was worried for Richie.

For fuck’s sake, he didn’t mean for Eddie to get all _concerned_. That’s not at all what he meant.

“Look, stop worrying: I’m not in the poorhouse. Anymore. Hardly enough to go around calling myself a _success_.”

“Hardly enough to call yourself a loser, either,” Mike pointed out.

“Losers never say die,” Richie said bitterly. He punctuated it with a wink, and another swig of his whiskey. It got easier to swallow the drunker he became. Luckily he was barely eating on an already empty, so he was getting drunk plenty fast.

They said goodbye to Mike with another series of bone-crushing hugs and the understanding that they would seek him out tomorrow afternoon, once they came up for air after the marathon fucking they usually got into the first night (and day) back in town. Except tonight, of course, Richie wasn’t so sure things were business as usual. He took out his Pall Malls and shook out the pack, picking out one that popped up with his teeth. Eddie sniffed at him but didn’t say anything. So Richie smoked, and they walked, and he swayed in the street, because he was a little drunk and a lot tired.

“You ever feel like we’re the dream?”

Eddie didn’t even need to ask what he was talking about, because of course he didn’t. They were in the same boat, up the same shitty creek, in the fire out of the frying pan together, all that bullshit. Eddie just wrinkled his nose and cut behind Richie to stand at his other side, up-wind from him. Richie transferred his cigarette to his other hand out of an abundance of courtesy.

“No,” Eddie finally said.

“Why not?”

“Because we remember everything. Our lives inside Derry and our lives outside. Our outside selves, they only remember life outside Derry. They’re incomplete.”

“But this is a democracy, Eddie my good man,” Richie said, putting on a Voice like an old-timey politician. “And in a democracy: majority rules.”

Eddie was quiet a long time after that, and Richie shut his big gob because he’d said what he needed to say. His deepest fears. What he had been worrying at in his mind like a sore in his mouth. Richie lifted the cigarette to his mouth and took a long drag, turning his head from Eddie as he exhaled. He waved the last remnants of smoke away that the wind didn’t carry, out of politeness. If he was getting any tonight he was going to have to brush his teeth and gargle with Eddie’s travel Listerine first. But he kind of felt like he wasn’t getting any. Wasn’t even sure if he was in the mood for some. It was their first fucking night back, he should be mounting Eddie like a bear in heat, but. Sometimes you just didn’t feel like it.

“That guy can’t be me,” Eddie finally said, so long later that Richie almost could have gotten away with pleading that he couldn’t remember what they were talking about. Except he’d brought it up, and it was all he could think of, so of course he knew what Eddie meant.

“That guy is you. Fifty weeks outta the year. Doesn’t that make him you? Much more you than the guy you are for two non-consecutive weeks.”

“That guy forgot who he was,” Eddie protested.

“People forget shit about themselves all the time,” Richie pointed out. “If perfect recall is a condition for consistency of identity then the only people who are the same people over time are those weird freaks who can remember everything that happened to them every day of their life.”

“You know I don’t mean it like that,” Eddie snapped. “We forget our most formative experiences when we leave this shithole. If there’s something that makes us who we are, it’s what we did that summer. It’s our friends. That other me, he’s like, me from a fucking parallel universe where I never met you guys.”

“But what if you hadn’t,” Richie pointed out. He puffed at his cigarette, sweeping the smoke away from Eddie. “What if you’d grown up in Bangor and never met us? What if I had grown up in Portland? Then we’d be the guys we are in the dream world, and so how can we say that’s not who we are? That’s _exactly_ who we are. Just, if we hadn’t met.”

“I’m not me without you.”

Richie couldn’t reply to that. He took a drag from his cigarette, singeing his fingers on the filter, he sucked so hard. Cursing under his breath, Richie flicked the butt from his fingertips, aiming for and hitting the sewer at the side of the road. Take some cancer sticks, Pennywise. Maybe it’ll slow you down next time you’re chasing us through the bowels of this hellish town.

“I think it’s just an excuse.” Richie jammed his hands into his jacket pocket. It was a decent leather jacket—he’d bought it when he started making some money with regular gigs, as a treat to himself. “That’s just a way to avoid responsibility for what shitty guys we are, outside. I mean, who says we’d do any better with our lives with all our memories? If we left Derry this time and kept all our memories intact, would you leave your mother? Would I stop telling shitty sexist jokes?” Richie laughed hollowly. “I don’t know about you, but I fucking wouldn’t. What the fuck would I do different with my life, if I remembered? Come _out_? How the fuck am I supposed to have a career like that?”

“It’s not about leaving my mother, it’s-”

“Well then what would you do different, Eddie? Come on. Name one thing you’d do different, if you remembered.”

Eddie bit his lip, thinking for a long minute. Then he looked away. Richie laughed, terrible emptiness in his chest threatening to swallow him whole.

But then, like a shot in the dark:

“I’d stop using my inhaler.”

Richie snorted, not realizing this was important. Not realizing Eddie was serious. “Bullshit, you still use it here-”

“Yeah, because I can’t undo twenty-five weeks of conditioning in a week. I need fucking therapy, man, I need fucking cognitive behavioral training and shit. It wouldn’t come all at once, Richie. But that’s the fucking _point_.” Eddie stopped and turned to him, making Richie stutter to a stop with him. Eddie’s big brown eyes glimmered up at him, shinning in the dim yellow light of the phosphorescent streetlights that this town hadn’t upgraded yet. His chin was tilted up, his jaw clenched. That was Eddie’s serious face ( _his brave face_ ) and Richie abruptly realized this wasn’t just some half-hearted bullshitting session for Eddie.

“If I could remember everything, if I could have the consistency of my own past, then I could get to work fixing some things. I could start getting off the inhaler. I’d know what caused all my hypochondria and anxiety. I could _work through it_ , because I would know the _cause_ , Richie. That’s what we’re fucking missing, out there: that _cause_. We’re floundering around, reacting and reacting and reacting, but we don’t remember what we’re reacting _to_ , far enough back. We can remember yesterday, and last month, and last year, but go far enough back and that chain gets broken and just starts outta nothing.”

Richie tongued at his teeth.

“I don’t got a cause.”

Eddie’s eyes softened at that, lips opening in a quiet, gentle _oh_. Richie looked away, hands curled into fists in his jacket.

“What the fuck is there for me to remember, Eddie-my-love? I know I’m gay. And Pennywise didn’t make that happen.”

“You’d remember people love you,” Eddie whispered.

“Not like that.”

“Yes like that,” Eddie insisted. “Me, Mike-”

“Doesn’t change the world.” Richie kicked his motorcycle books against the damp asphalt. Had it rained today? Yesterday? “Wouldn’t change a fucking thing about my life.”

They started walking again, slowly, shuffling steps loud in the overwhelming quiet of a small town in the early night. Richie remembered evenings like this, spent with Eddie. And Stan, and Bill, and the rest. Riding their bikes home, wandering around with each other home from the Barrens once it got dark. Richie wondered if those memories mattered. If they did anything for him and his behavior, being here, in the Derry. Was he a different person just because he had friends? If he had six people who knew him— _really_ knew him, warts and fudgepacking and all—would that matter? Would that change him?

He might be happier, he thought. He didn’t want to admit that.

Maybe he was feeling vindictive, or maybe he wanted to continue the fantasy, because after a few minutes Richie asked: “What would you do with your mom?”

“She’s my mother. And she’s fucked up, herself. She doesn’t deserve to die alone.”

Richie snorted. Of course that’s what he’d say. But…

“But.”

The muscle in the side of Eddie’s jaw worked as he thought.

“Maybe I’d figure out a way to maintain healthy boundaries with her. Maybe I’d set her up in assisted living somewhere. Maybe I wouldn’t: but even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t let her run my life the way she does now. I wouldn’t let her walk all over me. I shut up and play the good son now because I think she has my best interests at heart. I don’t know that she’s hurting me. As far as I know, I really am…” Eddie’s shoulders dropped. “As weak as she thinks I am.”

Richie wanted to wrap him up and kiss him. But he just…

“Maybe you’d do better,” Richie granted him. “I don’t think I would.”

They walked back to the Inn in silence and got ready for bed. Richie brushed his teeth and gargled with Eddie’s Listerine, even though he didn’t really think either of them were in the mood tonight. But when he crawled into bed and curled up facing away from Eddie, after a few seconds’ hesitation the squeaky Inn mattress shifted and Eddie pressed along his back, pulling Richie into his embrace. Richie sighed and pushed back against him, feeling the soft pressure of Eddie’s mostly-flaccid dick against his ass. He humped lightly back against it, not with any intent, just enjoy the strong, comforting feeling.

Eddie dropped a kiss behind Richie’s ear before sliding a hand down between them, under the sheets, teasing at the waistband of Richie’s boxers. Rather than moving forward, the hand moved back, tracing its way between Richie’s ass cheeks. An electric, secret thrill went through Richie at the soft touch.

And then Eddie’s voice murmured in his ear: “Can I finger you?”

Richie’s boxers were off before Eddie even finished asking the question. He reached over to the nightstand with his stupid long arms—finally, they were good for _something_ —and hucked their bottle of lube over his shoulder at Eddie.

“Yeah, that’s-” Richie’s voice fucking cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “If you want.”

He could feel Eddie’s smile against his neck. Eddie’s fingers drifted away from a minute, then came back, trailing slick down his crack. Richie groaned and pushed his ass back. They’d never done it like this before—Eddie had never come anywhere close to Richie’s ass. Richie kind of figured it was a gross factor for him. And even though Richie was amenable to some ass play—very, _very_ amenable to it, in fact—he also loved everything they did together plenty enough to never need to push Eddie into something he might not be comfortable with.

But then Eddie was pressing two fingers against Richie’s hole, massaging it in a clockwise motion, just warming him up, and Richie melted against the mattress.

“Eddie,” he moaned, sounding pathetically broken. Eddie kissed his neck and hummed. Then he pressed his fingers inside and Richie’s brain was on _fire_ , like a fucking Christmas tree four weeks after Christmas. The sheets shifted over him, Eddie moving strategically beneath them. Then Richie felt lube dribble directly on his asshole, Eddie’s fingers spreading him open to let that lube just pour in. There was a loud, unseemly _squelch_ as Eddie fucked his fingers back in, lube overflowing out of his asshole as Eddie started to gently fuck him. Richie squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed his pillow with both hands. Holy _fuck_ , Eds.

As if sensing his desperation, Eddie leaned forward to lick a stripe up his neck. Richie trembled and sighed, even as Eddie started to finger fuck him steadily. He scooted closer still, his arm trapped between them bodies, his erection nudging up against the side of Richie’s ass.

“Push your fingers down,” Richie told him, pumping his ass back lightly, trying to get that perfect angle.

Eddie nipped at his ear. “Be patient,” he whispered.

“Patient for what, I thought you were going to finger me?”

“I am fingering you.”

“You’re supposed to hit my prostate.”

“I’m working you up to it.”

“I’m worked up to it.”

“I’m getting you aroused.”

“Eddie, I’m so fucking aroused, just hit my prostate.”

“You are so fucking impatient, look, it’s better the more aroused-”

“Eddie-”

“Richie, shut the fuck up and let me concentrate on fingerfucking you for the first time?”

Richie grinned against his pillow, eyes closed as he concentrated on the sensation of Eddie’s fingers working inside him. “I was actually trying to distract you from that. In case you needed it.”

Eddie was quiet for a minute as his fingers worked inside Richie. He added a little more lube before kissing Richie’s shoulder tenderly.

“Thanks, Rich. But I got it.”

And that’s when, the fucking evil little genius that he was, Eddie curled his fingers forward and pressed firm, tight circles against Richie’s prostate.

“ _Fuuuuuck_ ,” Richie drawled out. Eddie nibbled at his shoulder, then licked away the pain.

“Told you I knew what I was doing.” Eddie’s voice was insufferably smug. Richie kind of loved suffering it.

“Yeah yeah, you’re a prodigy finger-fucker, con _gruggghhh, fuck_ -”

Eddie had started tapping his fingers against Richie’s prostate, slow at first but getting faster. When Richie thought it was going to be too much, Eddie switched back to fucking him gently, except this time he _dragged_ his fingers firmly over his prostate with every slide out, then in. Richie’s dick was leaking white in a minute from the focused attention, red and hard and ready to go off.

“Fuck, Eds, I’m gonna fucking dry orgasm if you don’t touch me.”

“I like the sound of that,” Eddie hummed. But he popped the cap on the lube one more time: first, dribbling some into Richie’s hole, _again_ , and then reaching forward with a lube-slicked hand to wrap it around Richie’s weeping dick.

“ _Fuuuck_ , Eds-”

“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie panted into Richie’s shoulder. He was starting to sound one-tenth as broken as Richie felt.

“I can’t handle both syllables right now, Eds. My brain is leaking outta my dick.”

“Oh my God, you- I’m-”

“I know Eds, I’m feeling overwhelmed too.”

Eddie was _vibrating_ laughing against his back, fingers stuttering in their carefully calculated rhythm. That felt like more of a victory than anything else, and turned Richie on even more than a perfect prostate massage. He loved making Eddie laugh. Eddie’s forehead dropped to Richie’s shoulders as his giggles faded, fingers picking up their pace inside of him. They paused, just to start tapping away at Richie’s prostate like it was a fucking telegram and this was the SS Richie Tozier, going down in three… two…

“Fuck, Eddie, right there, right there…”

“I know,” Eddie mumbled into his shoulder.

“I know you know I’m giving you positive affirmation you fuckkk _kkkkk_ …”

“God do you ever fucking shut up.”

“Oh fuck, keep stroking me,” Richie moaned, eyes squeezed shut. “I’m, I-”

Eddie fisted his dick perfectly, switching his fingers inside of Richie to press down continuously, rubbing firm, demanding, _perfect_ circles against his prostate, keeping the pressure on, driving Richie higher, and higher, until, _finally_ -!

Richie was not responsible for the noises he made as he spilled what felt like every fluid in the lower half of his body out of his dick.

“ _Fuuuuck_ , Eds…”

“Yeah,” Eddie panted against Richie shoulder. He gave him a sweet little kiss as he pulled his fingers out. Then he wiped both hands on Richie’s flank, semen and lube catching in Richie’s thigh hair. Richie giggled, a little delirious still with the best orgasm he’d had in… he couldn’t even remember. His whole body was tingling. What the _fuck_.

“Do you…” Richie started to turn around but Eddie shook his head and squeezed his arms tighter around him.

“No, hang on… can I just…” He started to hump his dick against Richie’s ass—not pushing it in, just humping his hips against it. Richie turned, reaching for Eddie’s face, and Eddie went with him, kissing Richie wet and deep. His thrusts sped up, jackhammering briefly until he groaned into Richie’s mouth and Richie felt hot cum stripe his ass.

“Sorry,” Eddie mumbled. His hand traced down Richie’s hip, back to cup his ass. It smeared through the mess he’d left and Richie swore his dick twitched in interest at that. Down, boy. “It’s, ugh, all over.”

“Shut up, don’t apologize, I fucking love it.” Richie assured him. He rolled over to kiss him again even as Eddie wrinkled up his nose.

“You’re smearing it all over the sheets.”

“It’s on my side,” Richie mumbled into his mouth. “I’ll sleep in the wet spot.”

Eddie licked into his mouth, sucked on Richie’s lip, kissed him good and deep the way Richie wanted to be kissed. Then he pulled back, face scrunched back up in disgust.

“I need to wash my hands.”

Richie giggled and fell back against his pillows as Eddie hurried off to the bathroom, hands held in front of him like they were hazardous materials. He washed his hands a stupid long amount of time, so long Richie thought he might nod off before Eddie came back to bed. But he somehow managed not to, and was treated to the sight of Eddie strolling naked through their room, still-softening dick flopping gently between his legs. Richie smiled at it, eyes tracing the mess of dark hair that surrounded it: on Eddie’s stomach, on his thighs, on his balls. Richie loved all that hair. He loved that Eddie didn’t really do anything to groom it. He hoped Eddie never did.

They fell asleep with Eddie spooning Richie like his own personal jetpack, and for a minute, as they drifted off, it felt like normal again. Or what was normal for their Derry-selves, in this world they’d created, safe from the outside.

Richie knew it wouldn’t be all fingerbanging and orgasms tomorrow. But just tonight, just for this moment, he was held tight in Eddie’s arms, back pressed against Eddie’s chest, and it was okay. It was enough.

But only for tonight.

* * *

Richie dangled his feet over the edge of the roof, staring down between his legs at the pavement below. Eddie was sitting on the edge with him, radically, but then again, Eddie could be more of a risk-taker than Richie, under the right circumstances. Eddie loved to drive fast, Eddie loved to race bikes down the steepest hill in town, Eddie ran forward and got closer to Bowers than any of them during the rock war.

It all just depended on the circumstances.

Richie held the cigarette out to Eddie and he shook his head, sighing faintly. As Richie took a long drag on the cigarette he tried to relax, let the nicotine work its healing magic. His left hand fiddled with the ring on his finger, thumb rotating it over and over, the sharp sides of the diamonds scraping against the soft skin of his finger pad.

“I’m getting scared, dude,” Richie finally admitted.

Eddie looked over at him, eyes wide. “Scared?”

Richie let his eyes slide over to Eddie’s. “Of myself. My other-self.”

Eddie’s mouth twisted and he looked down, fiddling with the concrete wall he was sitting on. He had one leg tucked up under him, the other dangling over the side, and was mostly facing Richie.

“What’s there to be scared of?” Eddie asked. He smiled crookedly up at him. “Afraid how much your jokes suck?”

Richie thought of Steve. Handsome Steve, short Steve, angry, high-strung, type-A Steve, who spoke too fast and watched Richie like he was a fire he was going to have to put out.

He fucking hoped Steve really was straight. Knew exactly what his other-self would do the second he got even a hint that Steve would be amenable to a friendly dick-sucking.

“Richie?”

“You know what I’m afraid of,” Richie mumbled, suddenly angry with Eddie. He sucked on his cigarette and tried to push down the anger, but that only made it grow. Eddie was the one keeping them from leaving together, from remembering each other in the outside world. Eddie was the one playing this dangerous fucking waiting game, where every six months they could make an irreparable mistake. Fuck leaving together, Richie would stay here in Derry if Eddie even _thought_ it. He wasn’t sure how exactly he’d do his comedy thing in this stupid fucking town, but he’d get a job as a… a fucking drama teacher at the high school, as a radio guy, as a fucking newspaper columnist, _whatever_. If Eddie breathed the thought Richie would buy a house tomorrow, career in comedy be damned. They were all going to fucking die when they were forty, anyway. Who cared about trying to make enough money for retirement or building a career when you had that Logan’s Run countdown ticking every day?

Richie sucked his cigarette down to the filter. He flicked out the cherry, then started peeling apart the paper and the filter, deconstructing the butt.

“I’ve got a manager now,” Richie explained.

Next to him, Eddie sucked in a breath.

“He’s straight. But, you know: I’m ‘straight,’ too. As far as he knows.”

“What about as far as you know?” Eddie whispered.

Richie winced and shook another cigarette out of the pack. His lucky stared up at him, tobacco end a brown spot amongst the dozen white filter butts left. Richie pulled the cigarette that shook up with his teeth, lighting it and sucking the first few puffs without even touching it. Two, three more puffs, and finally Richie pulled the cigarette out from between his teeth and thumbed at the filter nervously.

Eddie wasn’t supposed to ask that. They didn’t talk about that. And Eddie was… he was supposed to know. It was why Richie stopped asking him about fucking other people, when they were apart. Because Richie couldn’t answer the question when Eddie tossed it back at him.

“Eds…”

Eddie just nodded and stood up, dropping down from the ledge to walk across the roof. Richie cursed and stuck the cigarette between his teeth, dragging on it as he followed Eddie to the stairwell.

“Eddie…”

“I’m not mad,” Eddie insisted, but he didn’t turn to look at him. Richie’s heart broke.

“Eddie: I love you.”

Eddie just… kinda of hummed.

Richie jogged up behind him to grab at Eddie’s arm. He tugged just enough until Eddie turned around, expression shuttered. Richie _really_ hated that.

“Eddie, what the fuck do you want me to say? What do you want to know? You want to know how many guys I’ve fucked? How many dicks I’ve sucked? How many guys have fucked _me_?”

Eddie’s expression cracked at that, open and distraught. Richie latched on because he was mean, because he was an asshole, and because Eddie had made this happen.

“What, that’s what gets you? Someone else had my ass before you did?”

“I didn’t know you would like that,” Eddie explained, slowly.

“You should have asked for it earlier. Because apparently dream-world Richie Tozier _loves_ it. He’s opening his ass up for every closeted top in Chicago. He’s _begging_ for it.”

Eddie stormed away from Richie, slamming open the door to the stairwell. Richie took one more drag on his cigarette and flicked it away before following him. He exhaled the smoke inside, storming down the stairs.

“What? I thought you said you wanted to hear it?” Richie hollered after him.

“Fuck _off_ , Richie!”

“Let me tell you about the time there were two guys-”

Eddie took three steps down from a landing, then whirled around when Richie was still on it. He grabbed Richie and shoved him into the unfinished brick wall of the stairwell.

“Stop it, Richie! Fucking stop it! It’s not fair, it’s not fair, because I don’t have anything to throw back at you, I’m a fucking thirty-one-year-old virgin and I can’t _hurt_ you like you hurt me!”

Richie stared at Eddie, panting harshly. He thought about kissing him. He thought about grabbing Eddie and pressing him to the wall, having him right here. But he was so… he wasn’t even angry, he was so fucking _sad_. For all his shouting, and his boasting, he was fucking dying from the inside out, every minute he spent outside Derry with Eddie. Cheating on Eddie, in body and soul.

“My manager looks like you,” Richie whispered.

Eddie’s eyes went wide in shock. His hands dropped from Richie’s shirt and he took a stumbling step back.

“What?”

“He looks like you. I’m looking for you. I don’t know I am. But every guy, he…” Richie looked into Eddie’s big, dark eyes, thinking how Steve couldn’t hold a _candle_ to Eddie, how _no one_ ever stirred even one-quarter of the depth of feeling inside Richie that Eddie could just by smiling, or even trying not to smile. Sometimes Richie even liked the latter more, because it meant Eddie couldn’t help himself, as much as he wanted to.

Richie just wanted to spend his life making Eddie smile. And Eddie wouldn’t _let_ him.

“They’re all ghosts of you,” Richie whispered.

Eddie’s dark eyes swam with feeling. Before a tear could fall he was spinning away from Richie, running back down the stairs. Richie slumped against the wall and let him run.

After a long moment he knocked his head back against the brick.

 _“Fuck._ ”

* * *

It was late when Richie snuck back into the Derry Inn, trying to tip-toe his way up the creaky wooden stairs. He pushed the door to their room open as quietly as he could, sure that Eddie would be asleep. To his surprise, Eddie was sitting up in bed, laptop open in his lap, an ethernet cable roping across the room to the plug in the wall. Richie stopped in the doorway, a little uncertain.

“Get in here, you look like you’re trying to rob the room,” Eddie grumbled. He scooted over on the bed and pushed the sheets back, as clear an invitation as if he’d scattered rose petals around.

He’d scattered rose petals on the ground of the _Aladdin_ when he asked Richie to marry him.

Richie swallowed and toed his shoes off. He dropped his jeans and shirt and crawled into bed next to Eddie in his dirty boxers from the day, waiting for Eddie to say something. But then he noticed what Eddie was looking at on his laptop.

“Oh fuck, Eddie, come on, don’t look at that, it’s-”

“It sucks,” Eddie observed.

Richie flushed. He wished he’d left his shirt on just so he had a collar to tug at, Rodney Dangerfield style.

“Well, hey, that’s… which show is that? That’s probably old material, look-”

“It all sucks,” Eddie told him, scrolling up the shitty website Steve paid some kid with emo bangs to throw up for them. “I started watching from the top down. You don’t get much better.”

“Youch, thanks Eddie, and here I thought you were going to apologize-”

“You bragged about all those great ass fuckings you’ve been getting in Chicago, I’m not apologizing to you.”

“It’s your fucking _fault_ -”

“Richie? Shut the fuck up.”

Eddie was sighing and closing the laptop, setting it on the floor next to the bed. He sat up and looked over at Richie. He looked so prim and proper like that: his hair brushed back neatly, his night shirt unwrinkled, somehow (how were his shirts always unwrinkled? Was it a special detergent?). Now he was biting his lip, shoulders slumping as he worked up the courage to say whatever he was about to say.

“Look, I know this is… We knew this was going to happen. Eventually.”

“It wouldn’t happen if we left together,” Richie pointed out.

“I fucking can’t, Richie. I’ve got my mother to look after.”

“ _Fuck_ Sonia,” Richie hissed.

“She’s a sick old woman, Richie,” Eddie snapped. “She’s half blind and the doctors say they’re going to have to take her foot soon if she doesn’t get her blood sugar under control. She needs me.”

“ _I_ need you.”

“You can live without me.”

“What if I fucking _can’t_.” Richie’s voice broke. He willed himself not to cry. Stay angry. Stay angry enough not to cry. “I’m fucking _miserable_ out there, Eddie.”

“You think I’m not, too?!” Eddie swept an arm out, hand chopping through the air between them. “I’m so closeted I don’t even _know_ I’m in the closet, Richie! I’m a thirty-one-year-old virgin because I’m so scared of my mother that I never bring girls home. And I can’t stay over at someone’s house because I have a fucking _curfew_.”

“Then put her in a fucking home and leave with me!”

“It’s not that simple-”

“You’ve got the money. You saved ten grand in six months without even realizing you were doing it, you make _tons_ of money.”

“It’s not about the money, Richie. She’s my mother.”

“She tortured you!”

“I love her!”

Tears pricked at Richie’s eyes as they looked away from each other, panting harshly. Fumbling out, Richie grabbed Eddie’s hands and held them. Then he tugged him, closer and closer, until he was pulling Eddie into his lap. Richie smoothed shaking palms over Eddie’s back as he looked up at him. Sighing, Eddie reached up to wipe the tears from Richie’s cheeks with big, broad palms. Fuck, they were both all grown up. They were men, with the problems of men.

Richie wanted desperately to be thirteen years old forever, hidden away in their childhood town together.

“Please, Eddie,” Richie croaked. “Before I do something stupid like get into a relationship with someone else.”

“You won’t love them. Not like you love me.”

“But I’ll _think_ I do.”

Eddie searched Richie’s face. “Do you love him? Your manager?”

Richie bit his lip. “Steve is straight.”

Eddie’s doe eyes bore into him. That wasn’t an answer.

“Not yet. But I’ve got a type. I might, one day. And there might be someone else, someone available. And I’m so fucking lonely, Eds, out there. If there was a chance, I would jump at it.”

Richie grabbed at Eddie’s hand, desperately. He pulled Eddie’s left hand to him and folded his own left hand over it, clicking their wedding bands together pointedly.

“Promise me,” Richie told him. “Promise me that when Sonia dies, we try and leave together. Just once. We have to _try_.”

Eddie’s eyes swam. He reached up and covered their joined hands with his right, squeezing tight.

“Richie. Of fucking _course_ I’m going to leave with you. You think I wouldn’t? I proposed to _you_ , you fucking asshole.”

“Uh, I suggested it first,” Richie pointed out.

“I’m the one who bought the fucking rings,” Eddie shot back. “You’re all talk and no action.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you first.”

“Haven’t yet.”

Eddie scowled at him and Richie laughed, pulling Eddie in for a kiss. Their hands stayed firmly clasped between their chests.

“You promise?”

“Of course I fucking promise,” Eddie growled. “You act like I _want_ all this bullshit. Like I’m using it as an excuse.”

 _Well_ …

“I’m not. I’m not. I…” He looked at Richie. “I’m only brave when I’m with you. If… If I could be with you all the time, I feel like… maybe I could be brave all the time. And I want that, Richie. I want that so fucking bad. To be brave.”

Richie sighed and kissed Eddie on the forehead, which just made him scrunch up and squirm away from the tender affection.

He wanted to tell him, _you are brave_. He wanted to tell Eddie he’s the bravest person he knows, that he nearly killed a fucking monster clown when he was thirteen, that he made it in the biggest, scariest city in the world, that he managed to support his mother and himself even while she was telling him he was weak, he was sick, he was small. But he wasn’t sure if Eddie would believe him. Or listen at all.

* * *

Eddie didn’t get out of bed right away their last Sunday morning. Richie pulled him close and thanked whoever-the-fuck for small miracles, and recognized it as a gift Eddie was giving him. A consolation prize. Eddie rolled over and took Richie into his arms, running his fingers along Richie’s shoulders, plucking teasingly at the hair he never bothered to shave up there. He probably couldn’t reach it if he tried, anyway. His flexibility was about on par with Lurch’s.

If Richie was a masochist he’d ask how long Eddie had. But sometimes, just sometimes, he had a self-preservation instinct, so he bit his tongue and instead rubbed his feet against Eddie’s always freezing ones. Eddie shivered and buried his feet under Richie’s legs. He could feel Eddie’s morning wood pressing into his hips, just a little half-chub, not really with intent just yet. Richie shifted his thighs just right so they would press against Eddie just that little bit more, giving him a touch more friction. Eddie hummed and pressed against him, chub slowly working its way up to a full hard-on.

“You think you’re still open from last night?” Richie teased. His hand drifted between them, brushing gently over Eddie’s dick through his boxers and then moving around back. Eddie snorted and leaned in for a kiss, morning breath be damned. He really was spoiling Richie today.

“No,” Eddie replied dryly. His eyes met Richie’s. “But that means you get to open me back up.”

His eyes flickered to Richie’s lips.

And so that’s why Richie grabbed Eddie and flipped him onto his stomach, slamming his face maybe too hard against the pillow as Richie grappled with his boxers. But Eddie was laughing, and then moaning softly as Richie finally got those stupid fucking boxers off (they were Richie’s boxers, but that didn’t make them any less stupid) and revealed the hairy, gorgeous globes of Eddie’s rock-hard ass.

“What the fuck do you do a hundred squats a day?” Richie grumbled as he gripped Eddie’s ass in both his hands, massaging the hard muscle. He paused to push his glasses up to his forehead. Didn’t need them where he was going.

“Uh, yeah. Kind of? I use the stepper a lot at the gym.”

“God, you fucking Manhattan asshole, I love you.”

And before Eddie could come up with a witty retort— _“Alright Chicago deep-dish_ ,” something like that—Richie bent down and lapped a thick stripe over Eddie’s hole.

Eddie groaned and _melted_ against the mattress as Richie got to work.

Richie buried his face in Eddie’s ass, doing his best, sloppiest work against Eddie’s asshole. He spit, he drooled, he slobbered all over that desperate little pucker, begging for his tongue. Richie flattened his tongue and rubbed it rough over Eddie’s hole, making him grunt and groan against his pillow. When Richie pulled away for a breath he made sure to suck his thumb into his mouth so he could use it to massage Eddie’s rim, lest it get lonely without his tongue for a few seconds. Then he dove back in, messing Eddie all up.

“Fuck, Richie, fuck…”

Eddie was getting nice and worked up. If Richie could grin he would have, but instead he did the next best thing, and slipped his tongue into Eddie’s sucking hole.

That’s when Eddie really lost it, like he always did. Richie started to tongue-fuck him but Eddie’s hand was there almost before he could start, grabbing the back of Richie’s head and _shoving him_ harder against Eddie’s ass.

Richie kind of wanted to pull back and say “Eager, aren’t we?” but that would mean stopping, and there was no way he was going to stop tongue-fucking Eddie’s ass when Eddie was making _those_ noises and shoving Richie’s face _flat_ between his ass cheeks with a desperate abandon surely anyone would be shocked to see little Eddie Kaspbrak exhibiting.

Yeah: this side of Eddie was all for Richie.

Richie pulled back only because he needed to breathe. Even as Eddie whined Richie made sure to shove two fingers in him, keeping him happy enough.

“How you want it, gorgeous?” Richie panted.

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie grunted at the epithet. But he glanced back at Richie with one eye from his place smushed against the pillows. “I’ll ride you. Want to feel you deep.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Richie groaned, diving back down to lick at Eddie’s hole some more. Eddie groaned and pounded at the mattress. Richie’s jaw was starting to cramp, and Eddie was probably getting beard-burn, but fuck if Richie didn’t want to die down here, face-deep in Eddie’s asshole.

“Okay, fuck, _fuck_ ,” Eddie groaned, pushing Richie’s head back. “Stop, fuck, you’ll make me come.”

“That’s generally the idea,” Richie pointed out, but he stopped. He fingered Eddie roughly, dripping some lube straight into his raw asshole. “Okay,” Richie panted. He knocked his glasses back down onto his face as he grabbed for a condom off his nightstand and tore it open. Eddie was slowly getting his legs back under him, and by the time Richie had the condom rolled onto his dick Eddie was shoving him backwards against the pillows and climbing on top.

“ _Fuuuuck_ ,” Eddie groaned as he sank down onto Richie’s dick. Richie just held onto his hips and stared up, adoringly, as the tendons in Eddie’s neck tensed and then slowly relaxed. Eddie was tight and wet around him, and hot, so _fucking_ hot, but Richie was happy to lie back and hold on for the Eddie Kaspbrak ride. For a couple minutes while he got his breath back, at least.

Eddie barely warmed up before he was leaning back, one hand braced on the mattress between Richie’s knees as he rode Richie’s dick hard.

“Fuck, you’re a fucking regular cowgirl,” Richie grunted, hands nearly spanning Eddie’s narrow hips.

“Shut the fuck up, asshole,” Eddie snapped.

“You’re the asshole,” Richie grinned. He fucked his hips up hard into Eddie to prove his point. Eddie’s eyes fluttered shut, dick twitching against his stomach, red and leaking precome in gobs. Fuck, Richie loved how wet he got. It was fucking disgusting and Eddie probably _hated_ that about himself. It was perfect.

“I’m going to fuck you so hard you feel it tomorrow,” Richie growled. “Fuck you so hard you can’t sit on the plane without _knowing_ you got fucked in the ass.”

“Yes, yes,” Eddie moaned, bouncing on Richie’s dick. “Fuck me hard. Fuck me so I know.”

His hands were scrambling at Richie’s chest, fingernails scratching through his chest hair, over his nipples. Richie lifted a hand from Eddie’s his to grab at them, folding left hand over left hand, tangling their fingers together so their rings clacked. Eddie breathed hard, head thrown back, not looking down at Richie. Because if he looked down at Richie he’d see him crying, and Eddie knew that, they both knew that. Richie bit his lips and ignored his own tears, watching Eddie’s hard dick as it bounced in front of him, red and leaking. Richie brought their entangled hands up to rub at it, thumb flicking through the precome beading at the head.

“Fuck, Richie,” Eddie moaned. He glanced down to watch their hands together rubbing at his dick. “ _Hngk_ , don’t touch me, don’t touch me-”

“Wanna come on my dick?” Richie asked, breathless. He tried to fuck up harder into Eddie but he couldn’t get the leverage right. Even with his feet braced on the mattress it wasn’t enough.

“Yeah, Richie, make me come on your di- _iiah_!”

Eddie screeched—he _screeched_ , and Richie would insist he fucking did to his _dying day_ , no matter how much Eddie tried to deny it—as Richie grabbed him and pulled him off his dick. This was just so he could flip Eddie back over, shoving his face into the pillows, hand on Eddie’s neck. Good, perfect Eddie kept his ass up, presenting it to Richie to get fucked just how he wanted. Richie held onto the base of the condom as he slipped back inside, quickly building back up their pace until he was pounding away into Eddie’s colon, balls slapping against his ass.

The thing was, when they did this particular position Eddie got _loud_. He was always embarrassed about it afterwards and mumbled some sort of excuse—he was drunk, he was half-asleep, he just really _missed_ Richie this time, he was just particularly horny that day—and swore that it wasn’t going to happen again.

But it happened. Every single time.

Eddie would just start _moaning_. Loud. And then _shouting_. It was ridiculous, it sounded like a fucking porno, but it only happened in this fucking position and Eddie couldn’t _stand_ to talk about it afterwards so apparently it was a hundred percent genuine and involuntary, and Richie fucking _loved it_.

“You like that dick?” Richie growled, smacking Eddie’s ass.

“Yes, yes, Richie, _fuck, fuck, yes, there, fuck-_ ”

Richie pounded his hips into Eddie. “I’m fucking _trying_ , babe.”

“Shut up, shut up, _fuck, yes, there, Richie-_ ”

“Yeah, yeah,” Richie grunted. He blew out a breath between his teeth, sweat dripping down his temples. Fuck, he wanted to come. But not until he fucked Eddie so hard he couldn’t sit in his little coach airline seat without squirming the whole way back to NYC.

“ _Don’t stop, don’t stop_ -”

“Not fucking planning on it.”

“ _Shut up, fuck, shut the fuck, fuck, fuck, up, fuck, yes, Richie_ -”

Eddie’s face was turned sideways on the pillow, his mouth an open circle of ecstasy, his eyes squeezed shut tight against the assault. His hands clenched around the sheets, body tensing more and more, sheets crumpling further and further in his grip. Richie grinned toothily, glasses slipping down his nose.

“You’re gonna fucking come,” Richie told him, because it was true.

Eddie couldn’t reply—not even to tell Richie to shut up. He just moaned louder and louder until he was shouting his release, untouched, all over the sheets below his stomach. Richie reached underneath to pump him through it, Eddie’s entire body trembling through the aftershocks. Still, Richie kept fucking away, chasing his own orgasm.

Eddie’s moans took on a whinier quality, but they weren’t pained—he was never in pain in this position, even when Richie fucked him through a second orgasm. But that definitely wasn’t on the table this morning, because Richie’s balls were tight and his palms sweaty, control slipping as he spiraled higher, and higher, and higher…

“ _Fuck_!” Richie shouted, bottoming out against Eddie’s ass and _grinding, grinding_ his orgasm into the condom on his dick. Eddie’s body clenched reflexively around him, milking the last drops of cum out of his oversensitive dick. Fuck, that felt good. Fuck, they were good.

Richie pulled out and shucked the condom off, dropping it into the frankly disgusting garbage can they’d filled over the course of the week. It was actually starting to smell pretty rank—maybe they should let housekeeping in once in a while. But whatever. It was the last morning. It was the last chance they had to be together. For another six months.

Richie pulled Eddie to him, and Eddie wrapped his arms around Richie, and they were spooning facing each other, Richie kissing Eddie’s jaw lazily as their hands stroked over their naked skin, still electric with the last errant sparks of orgasm flickering out of their systems.

“You think that’s enough to feel it?” Richie asked with a crooked smile.

Eddie huffed out a laugh and scrunched up his nose, shifting around. He quirked an eyebrow as he thought. Then his eyes locked with Richie’s again and he grinned, wicked and brilliant.

“Nah. Sorry, Tozier. You’ll have to try twice as hard next time.”

Richie made a big show of climbing on top of Eddie so he could check the bedside clock on Eddie’s nightstand.

“That mouth’s going to get you in trouble,” Richie threatened him. “I’ve got time.”

Eddie shrugged, that wicked glint in his eyes. “Maybe.”

Richie leaned in for a kiss and Eddie pulled back, eyebrow quirked again.

“But not if you don’t rinse your mouth out, first.”


	6. 2009, Age 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Eddie has a panic attack in this, and since his panic disorder focuses on his lungs/being unable to breathe, the mental catastrophizing he goes through includes images of lungs filling with fluids, pneumonia, and intubation. Given current events I figured this was worth its own TW.

Eddie drove over the county line, past the _Welcome to Derry!_ sign on the side of the highway. And then he immediately pulled off to the side of the road, walked out of his rental car, and vomited in the grass.

Oh, God. Myra, Sonia- His mother, his wife- _Richie_. Richie, _Richie_ , oh _God_.

Richie was going to kill him.

Eddie screamed. He dropped to his fucking knees in the tall grass on the side of the highway and screamed.

* * *

Eddie was parked in front of Mike’s house. Normally he drove straight to the Inn. Normally he was so eager to see Richie. Even when they were fighting, even when they ended things on bad terms, he wanted to see Richie first.

Now he didn’t want to see Richie first.

Now he was scared of seeing Richie at all.

Eddie drummed his hands on the steering wheel, staring at Mike’s front door. Finally, after minutes, maybe even an hour, of just sitting there and staring, pushing back tears and bile, Eddie twisted the keys out of the ignition and stepped out. Every step up the porch felt surreal, like he was watching someone else in his body, moving his legs.

When Mike answered the door he couldn’t conceal his surprise. But he was delighted, too, enveloping Eddie in one of his classic bear hugs, dragging him inside without a second’s thought.

“Hey! I thought I’d see you tonight, you know.”

“Yeah. I just… wanted to swing by here first.” He smiled blankly at Mike. “How are you?”

“Good.” Mike stared at Eddie, head tilted a little as he tried to puzzle him out. After a moment he snapped his fingers and headed to the back of his house. “Hey, you want your ring? I was going to bring them tonight, but since you’re here…”

Mike returned with his fist closed. Mechanically Eddie held his hand out—his right hand—and Mike dropped his wedding band into it.

Eddie stared at the tungsten and diamond band. It was beautiful. He’d picked it out himself, something he thought both he and Richie could wear proudly. Something that would match both their personalities: Eddie’s a little bit flash, a little bit posh. Richie’s, strong and masculine.

His generic gold wedding band from his wedding to Myra sat on his left ring finger, feeling suddenly like it was too-tight, like it was restricting him. Like if he didn’t take it off now, he’d never be able to take it off, he’d have to cut it off with a bolt cutter, he’d have to slice into his skin, his finger would swell, would turn purple, would go numb…

Eddie tried to breathe, but suddenly he couldn’t. He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs, his heart was beating too hard, trying to get deoxygenated blood to his lungs, he was dizzy, he was going to faint, his brachial tubes were constricting ( _panic attack, you’re having a panic attack-_ ) his heart was going to stop, he was going to die-

“I just… Can I…” Eddie collapsed on Mike’s couch, putting his head between his knees. Breathe, breathe, don’t breathe too fast, if you breathe too fast-

Eddie grabbed his inhaler out of his jacket and sucked two long breaths from it. Fuck, fuck. It wasn’t helping, it wasn’t enough. Because it was a placebo, and there was something wrong with his lungs.

His hands were going numb. Fuck, _fuck_ , he was dying, his lungs were constricting, the capillaries were filling with fluid, he wouldn’t be able to draw a full breath soon. He’d contracted something on the plane, the dry air had perforated the soft tissue of his lungs, letting bacteria sneak in. Now he was developing bronchitis, soon that would turn into pneumonia, and he wouldn’t be able to breathe, he’d drown in his own fluids, he’d drown on dry land, choking, struggling to breathe, intubated-

A glass of water pushed into his arm. Eddie grabbed at it and swallowed thickly. The few seconds that drinking the water stopped him from breathing helped; it alleviated some of the dizziness, and his hands grew less tingly.

It was a panic attack. He was doing this to himself. It was just a panic attack.

Eddie sucked another pull from his inhaler.

“Eddie?”

“Sorry, I-”

He jumped up from Mike’s armchair and ran for his bathroom, suddenly certain his wedding band was cutting off circulation from his finger, that it’d never come off, no matter how much he tugged. He should have taken it off before the plane—his fingers swelled on the plane, they probably swelled around the ring. There would be a blood clot, it would form in his finger, now it was going to travel through his arteries and-

Soap and water. Eddie scrambled to soap up his ring finger.

The ring came off easily.

Right. Because it was new. It was sized for him. He hadn’t gained any weight since the wedding; he hadn’t been wearing this ring for thirty years as he slowly grew fatter with age.

Eddie set the ring carefully on the counter, having a sickening certainty that he would slip and it would fall down the drain. And then he’d have to explain that to Myra-

 _Myra_.

Eddie collapsed to his knees in front of the toilet and vomited again.

How was he going to face Richie?

He couldn’t face Richie.

Eddie left Mike’s bathroom with the tungsten ring on his finger, gold ring shoved deep in his pants’ pocket. Mike was waiting for him in the living room, standing like he wasn’t sure if he should offer him some food, or a stiff drink, or call an ambulance. Eddie offered him a wan smile that he knew wasn’t particularly reassuring, but at least wasn’t fake. Entirely.

“Okay. I’m okay.”

“Some memories coming back?”

“Something like that.” Eddie nodded at Mike, shoving his hands in his pockets.

His gold wedding band pressed against his fingertips.

“Sorry about that. I’m just going to… Go for a walk, I think. Clear my head. Hey, if Richie calls, will you tell him that?”

“Sure thing,” Mike agreed, slowly. He was obviously wondering why Eddie didn’t just call him himself, or send him a text. Richie could probably swing the twenty-five-cent fee—last time they were together his career had started to stumble towards success.

Eddie beat it the fuck out of there before Mike could figure out a way to politely ask the questions any reasonable person might ask. He’d find out soon enough. One way or another.

* * *

Eddie missed their dinner. Their traditional Welcome Back dinner they had with Mike every Saturday when they first came back to town, to Derry. But Eddie didn’t think he could keep any food down, so he skipped it.

He didn’t go back to their room, either. Didn’t drop off his stuff. Just kept his suitcases in his rental car as he walked and drove around town, peering at old haunts: the Barrens, the clubhouse, the canal, the pharmacy. He avoided the Aladdin because he was worried Richie might look for him there. His stomach growled as he pulled to a stop a block from the kissing bridge, fingers drumming over the steering wheel of his rental. His wedding ring—the one he’d bought himself, the one that Richie surely wore the mate of, on his own ring finger, somewhere out there in this cursed small-town tonight—glinted in the streetlights.

He showed back up at Mike’s doorstep late that night.

“Eddie?”

“Can I sleep on your couch?”

Mike stepped aside, because of course he did. Mike loved him, loved them both, like all the Losers loved each other. Eddie trudged wearily into Mike’s cozy little home.

“Richie’s been looking for you,” Mike explained. He shifted from foot to foot in his own living room.

“You told him I made it?”

“Yeah. But, uh…”

“I’m just not feeling very good,” Eddie explained. He lowered himself onto Mike’s couch, unable to meet his eyes. He could figure this out tomorrow. He couldn’t figure it out tonight.

And he couldn’t sleep in the same bed as Richie until he figured it out.

“Can you just, uh. If he calls, can you tell him I’m not feeling good?” Eddie pleaded. “I’ll see him tomorrow.”

Mike was quiet for a long moment as Eddie slid sideways on the couch, curling up into a ball. Finally he said: “Sure thing, Eddie. Let me grab you a blanket and a pillow.”

It wasn’t a good fucking sleep. He woke up with a crick in his neck and with his back with that weird, cautiously tense feeling, like the second he reached the wrong way the whole damn thing was going to seize up on him. But he’d slept, and it was morning. Day two of eight in Derry.

He had to see Richie.

* * *

Eddie let Richie hug him, eyes wet. Richie’s eyes were clear, except for the eyebrows drawn tightly together in concern as he searched Eddie’s expression. It wasn’t freaked out yet, though.

Eddie wondered what he’d thought. That Eddie had eaten some bad airport sushi and was riding it out at Mike’s place, trying to maintain a scrap of dignity? That Eddie had picked up a cold in his travels, and didn’t want to get Richie sick? He didn’t look scared.

He should look scared.

Eddie’s stomach churned.

Richie thought this was a normal reunion. Same old same old, year in and year out. But Eddie knew better. After this, everything would be different. He wouldn’t be surprised if there _were_ no more reunions, after this one. He wouldn’t blame Richie, if there weren’t. He deserved it.

“Richie, I gotta tell you something.”

Richie’s hand was already on his wrist, on his elbow. They were out in public, in front of the Inn, but Richie was trying to get him inside, where they could really touch, the way they wanted. Where Richie could kiss him hello, like he always did.

Eddie couldn’t let him get that far. It felt dirty and wrong.

“Richie, stop. I have to tell you. Before we go inside.”

“What, Eddie?”

Eddie took a step back from Richie. Not because Eddie was trying to stay out of punching range or anything stupid like that. Just the opposite: Eddie was staying out of comforting range. He didn’t want Richie touching him softly when he broke Richie’s heart.

“My mom’s dead.”

Richie’s face broke open in joy.

Eddie wanted to kill himself.

“I got married.”

Richie pulled up short. He… The first emotion on his face was confusion. Complete, blank, confusion. Eddie started to cry silently, staring forward at Richie, waiting for it to sink in.

It wasn’t fucking fair. Their lives weren’t _fucking fair_.

“What?”

“I didn’t know,” Eddie tried, voice cracking. “I’m so sorry, Richie. I didn’t know, I didn’t remember. I just, I got married, I didn’t know-”

Richie’s confusion was slowly being replaced by mounting horror. Eddie cried and looked straight ahead, facing Richie’s grief head-on because it was the least he deserved. It was all Eddie’s fault, after all. All of it. Their lives wasted. Their time gone. It was Eddie’s fault, because he’d been too much of a coward. Their whole lives, Eddie was a coward. And now that cowardice had ruined every possible future they ever had.

“Wh- H- When?”

“Two months ago.” It didn’t matter, but Richie had asked. Eddie wiped at his eyes, drawing a breath. He could. He could do this. He had to do this. For Richie. “Mom died a month after I came back. There was- She was a nurse, in hospice. I… I guess I went kind of crazy. I just…”

Richie paced back and forth on the beautiful spring day, grass springing back optimistically beneath his feet. “Okay, well.” Richie waved a hand in front of him, thinking. “Look, we can fix this from here, right? You just have to file for divorce from here, we can get you a lawyer, this town has lawyers, right?”

He hadn’t thought it through yet, Eddie realized with a sudden, calm clarity. Eddie didn’t blame him, because Richie had just found out. But Eddie had had the time to think it through, to game out every scenario. And he’d come to the only possible conclusion, the dead end which every alley of his mind inevitably arrived at.

“If I ask her for a divorce when I’m here, when I leave I’m going to think I was out of my fucking mind and call the whole thing off.”

“You could write a letter to yourself-”

“I’d remember for a little bit, but then I’d forget. Richie, we’ve run through everything already-”

Eddie meant in the years that they’d been doing this, in all those fights about Sonia, in all their plans about how they were going to handle Stan, when the time came. They’d gamed all this out one way or another in the past. They had never applied it to this particular situation, but the results didn’t change. Richie just hadn’t come to terms with that yet.

“Then write a hundred and eighty-three fucking letters, Eddie, write a letter for every day you’re going to be out of Derry-”

“I can’t live my life forgetting and remembering every day and stay sane, Richie-”

“Will you stop shooting down my ideas for two fucking seconds and help me out here, Eds?” Richie snapped. Then his expression smoothed and he shook his head, like he was trying to apologize, like _he_ was the one who did something wrong.

“Richie…”

Richie’s eyes went wild behind his glasses. He leapt forward and grabbed Eddie’s elbow, shaking him lightly. “Stay here.”

Eddie’s stomach dropped. He tried to swallow, but it felt like all the fluid in his body was busy concentrating in his eyes, even as he tried to keep the tears from falling.

“Richie-”

“No, Eddie, look.” Richie was pulling him close, trying to tug Eddie against him, to fold their bodies into one another’s. But Eddie stayed stiff against him, head turned to the side. A few errant tears fell, escaping his attempts to keep his sorrow in check. “Look,” Richie pleaded, arms wrapping around Eddie’s waist. “You can stay here. With Mike. You can file for divorce. We can just… we can both stay here, if you want, or I could go out, do my stand-up shit. I could be back here every month, I could just fuck off to make some money, you know? Or I could stay here with you, we could just stay here together, I can get a job DJing, whatever, teaching fucking theater to the kids at the high school.”

“Richie,” Eddie whispered.

“I’d do it. I’d do- I’d do anything, Eddie, please.”

Eddie shook his head. He chanced a glance back at Richie, their eyes meeting just long enough for Richie to read the intent in his eyes. Now it was Richie’s turn to stiffen against Eddie. He pulled back, though he couldn’t find it in him yet to unwrap his arms from around Eddie’s waist. To let him go.

“Eddie.”

“What do you expect me to do?” Eddie whispered, voice cracking. He tried to swallow the tears, to approach this logically. Because he was, he _was_ being logical, even if he was crying. “I’ve got a job. A career. I can’t do that from Derry-”

“Why not!”

“ _You_ can’t do your job from Derry-”

“ _Fuck_ my job, I’ll do whatever-”

“We can’t just. Stop living our lives and hide away in Derry,” Eddie tried to explain. “Just because-”

Richie’s arms dropped from around Eddie’s waist and he took a step back.

“Just because what?”

Eddie could barely see. He took a deep, shaking breath and wiped at his eyes.

“Just because _what_ , Eddie?” Richie snapped. “Just because I love you?”

“I didn’t say-”

“Because that isn’t enough for you, Eddie?”

Eddie clenched his teeth. “I didn’t _say_ -”

But Richie wasn’t listening anymore. “Because Eddie needs to go back to his job in _insurance_?”

“That’s not-”

“Because your life is so fucking _perfect_ outside of here?” Richie shouted. “Because you’ve got your perfect job that bought your perfect house with your perfect _wife, waiting for you to come home and fuck her pussy_!”

“I hate it!” Eddie shouted. “What the fuck do you want me to say, Richie?! We’ve had sex three mostly unsuccessful times in our two months of marriage-”

“You want me to cry you a fucking river?”

“You have boyfriends!” Eddie pointed out, wildly. “You’ve fucked a warehouse full of guys, if what you’ve said before is true-”

“Yeah well I didn’t fucking _marry any of them_!”

“I…” Eddie struggled against his own guilt. “It’s only one person, Richie, I’ve only been with one person, it’s nothing, she’s nothing-”

“What the absolute _fuck_ Eddie, did you marry the first woman who sucked your fucking dick?!”

“She hasn’t even done that,” Eddie laughed, hysteria causing the laugh to go on too long, too loud. He started hiccupping and, what the fuck, now he was hiccupping and crying and laughing, he was a mess, he was a fucking mess. But Richie wasn’t there to comfort him, because Richie was five paces away from Eddie, crying on his own and gripping his hair, having his own breakdown just two arms’ lengths away. Eddie laughed and laughed and wrapped his arms around himself because everything about their lives was insane, including his fucking marriage.

He was a _bigamist_.

Eddie fell to the grass and laughed, tears streaking down his cheeks.

“You’re a little _fuck_!” Richie screamed at him, and it just made Eddie laugh harder. Cry harder. Both.

Richie started to tug at his finger and Eddie had a moment of panic. He thought Richie was going to give his ring back. Throw it at him, maybe. And if Richie did that, Eddie didn’t know what he’d do. Lie down in this grass field in the center of Derry and never get up again, maybe. Or worse: return to Myra and block Mike’s number, purposefully trapping him in his own personal hell for the rest of his life.

But Richie didn’t do that. Perhaps it would have been too much even for him, even in this moment. He did pull his ring off, but after a moment of staring at it in his palm, Richie shoved his fist into his pocket. Eddie breathed again as Richie stormed off, watching his back with a sort of detached melancholy that he was afraid to even touch. What could he feel, when it was something this big? How could he even begin to open himself up to this feeling, to knowing that he had the love of his life, for seven short years, and that he’d thrown it all away. That they had a _chance_ together, a chance at a life, and Eddie had been too scared—too loyal? Too kind? That was being generous—to grab at it, to go out and live that life with Richie. Even if it wouldn’t work, even if he _knew_ it wouldn’t work, he’d never even given Richie the courtesy of a _chance_.

And now they were all out of chances.

Eddie pushed himself up far enough to sit on the grass. Then he folded his head in his hands and cried.

* * *

The morning of day four in Derry Eddie limped his way over to the Derry Inn, neck cramped almost beyond straightening and determined to get just a few decent nights’ sleeps (at least physically, if not mentally) before he had to go back to his horrible wife and horrible life and sink back into the failure of his own existence for the next six months.

Eddie had to lean against a tree and breathe the nausea away when he thought about Myra.

She looked like his mother. Like she could be his mother’s younger sister.

What the absolute fuck was wrong with him?

Myra wasn’t as bad as Sonia, it was true. She was a little clingy, and a lot anxious, but pot meet fucking kettle, right? She wasn’t very independent, kind of seemed like she belonged to an earlier generation of woman. Like she wanted to marry a husband who would take care of her while she tended house. Which, that wasn’t a fucking crime, and it wasn’t her fault that it drove Eddie insane to have to come home every day to someone who was _there_ , just _waiting_ for him, like a fucking spider in her web.

If it had been Richie waiting at home every day for him, Eddie knew he wouldn’t feel the same way. It wasn’t Myra’s fault he hated her. It wasn’t any particular thing she was doing. She wasn’t _abusing_ him, for fuck’s sake. She was a little desperate and a lot sad, thinking she was an old maid at thirty-six, when she was perfectly pretty (and only to Eddie was she an Oedipal nightmare; to anyone else she was a blonde woman with a pretty face and her make-up was always nicely done. She even might have a nice body, if Eddie knew what men liked in women. She had breasts and an ass, fleshy and perfectly pleasant to look at, maybe. Too bad Eddie’s type was tall and gangly, with a slightly chubby belly and, most importantly, long, thick dick hanging heavy between thighs the size of tree trunks).

Eddie shook his head and pushed off the tree. He didn’t want to think about Myra right now. Didn’t want to think about any of it. He wasn’t about to get his dick sucked on this “vacation” from hell in Satan’s asshole, but at least he could forget about his—pause here to swallow down another surge of bile in his gullet— _wife_ for half a week.

When Eddie shoved the Inn door open with his shoulder, he wasn’t expecting to see Richie in the lobby, rummaging around behind the reception desk. Eddie froze in the doorway with his suitcases, watching him. Richie was muttering to himself:

“-around here somewhere, I saw the fucking router you piece of- ah- _ha_!”

He held a slip of paper up in his hands, triumphant.

Then he looked across the lobby and saw Eddie.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I needed a room,” Eddie explained. He was shocked to hear his own voice. It sounded so steady, so calm.

“Isn’t the Missus waiting for you?” Richie snapped. “Shouldn’t keep her waiting. Or did you invite her out here for a getaway? Spice up your love life with a second honeymoon.”

“We didn’t have a honeymoon,” Eddie muttered.

“Cry me a fucking river!”

Richie stomped up the stairs without a backwards glance at Eddie. Until he was at the top of the stairs, where he leaned over the railing and shouted:

“Only you could be so fucking afraid of liking dick that you ended up shucking the first clam you fell into!”

A count of one, two, three stamping steps, growing steadily fainter until they were punctuated by the tenfold louder crack of a door slamming. Eddie closed his eyes.

“We haven’t done that, either,” he admitted. He leaned against the receptionist’s counter and breathed in, and out, letting the self-loathing wash over his body like a physical thing. There was no escaping it, so all he could do was sit in it. That’s what his therapist said about bad feelings: to practice experiencing them, feeling them, and doing nothing about them. That would show yourself that feelings didn’t have to manifest into action, and allow yourself to grow accustomed to the feeling itself.

On the other hand, the two-hundred dollar-an-hour quack apparently hadn’t figured out that Eddie was a gay man married to his Oedipal complex, so maybe the fucker didn’t know a fucking _thing_ about psychology.

Eddie grabbed himself a key to a room that he knew was on another floor and opposite side of the building from where Richie would be staying (unless Richie changed rooms? Because he couldn’t stand to stay in the room where him and Eddie had spent so many weeks over the years? But that was probably giving Eddie too much credit; he was probably just spinning fantasies about how Richie was hurting as much as he was. Richie hated him, right now. Richie couldn’t give two shits about some stupid sentimentality about a room filled with happy memories).

The room looked pretty much identical to the room him and Richie always shared together. The bathroom was on the opposite side, because the window was flipped, which made sense: it was the opposite side of the building. Eddie let his two suitcases roll gently to the end of the bed, then stood there in the middle of the room, like… what? Like he was going to unpack? Like he was going to… He glanced over his shoulder at the door.

No. Nothing. He wasn’t going to do a damn thing.

Just like always.

Eddie toed off his shoes and collapsed into the bed. He didn’t even bother taking his fucking pants off before he was asleep.

* * *

Eddie hadn’t told Mike. And he wasn’t sure if Richie had told Mike, either. But Mike had clearly figured _something_ was up, when Eddie spent half a week giving himself scoliosis sleeping on Mike’s frankly piece of shit couch.

And still, Mike called him up on his cell phone, voice chipper.

Eddie wondered if he’d called his cell phone deliberately, because he knew Eddie and Richie weren’t staying in the same room in the Inn, or if it was just an innocent decision. He wanted to talk to Eddie, he’d called Eddie’s cell phone. Nothing more sinister than that.

“Hey, Mike,” Eddie answered, not bothering to keep the exhaustion from his voice.

“Hey, Eddie!”

Yeah. He definitely had heard from Richie. His voice dripped with sympathy.

Eddie didn’t want to fucking hear it.

Irrationally, Eddie’s anger latched onto Mike. Why hadn’t he fucking stopped him? Why hadn’t Mike been _watching_ him? Had Mike known? Had he seen? Had he let it all fucking happen, because of some weird non-interference pledge he’d taken? He was never planning on bringing any of them back to Derry before the twenty-seven years were up in the first place: Richie and Eddie had been a fluke they’d discovered on their own.

“Can we grab dinner, man? I can’t just let you beat it out of here without having at least one meal out with you.”

All of Eddie’s anger drained out of him in one breath.

Mike wasn’t God. He wasn’t omniscient, or even a particularly technologically literate librarian. He didn’t have any way of _knowing_ that Eddie had gotten married: not unless he’d been running weekly records’ sweeps of the counties he and Richie lived in, which would be insane. If it was even doable: that seemed like the sort of thing that happened in movies, with lots of people running around in black latex; not something you could actually do in real life. Besides going on Facebook (which Myra, embarrassingly, had, and posted pictures of Eddie on it in spite of the fact that Eddie didn’t have an account himself) and stalking them that way, how could Mike have known?

In fact, Eddie was pretty fucking sure Mike didn’t even know what Facebook was. He was pretty old-fashioned when it came to research. More Dewey Decimal that Godfather Google.

“Yeah, Mike. Okay. Where you want to go?”

That wasn’t the question he should have asked.

“What the _fuck_ is Joseph Smith doing here, Mike?”

Eddie froze just inside the door of the generic Italian hole-in-the-wall restaurant, teen girl hostess next to him clutching a menu to her chest.

Eddie made to turn around. He didn’t fucking need this. _Richie_ didn’t need this. He wasn’t here to start a fucking fight. He knew he was the problem; he knew none of this was Richie’s fault. It was all his. This was Eddie’s bed, and now he had to lie in it. …With his… _wife_.

“No, hey, wait, Eddie, please-” Mike held out one hand to Eddie, even as he turned back to Richie. “Come on, Richie. Sit down? For one dinner?”

“I don’t fucking need this,” Richie fumed, throwing his napkin down on the table.

“Don’t get up, Richie,” Eddie told him. He waved a hand over his shoulder. “I’m leaving. You stay.”

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do!” Richie snapped.

Eddie pinched the bridge of his nose, knowing his forehead was wrinkling unattractively. He had to stop doing that, he was starting to get wrinkles in his fucking forehead, and he was only thirty-two, he wasn’t supposed to have wrinkles at thirty-two-

“I’m going to go,” Eddie tried again. He glanced over at Richie, waiting for him to argue with _that_. “I’ll see you, Mike.”

“No, come on…” Mike jogged over to him, grabbing Eddie’s elbow and steering him forcefully away from the door. Eddie tried to pull away but, uh, shit: Mike was a pretty big guy, actually. Now that he was manhandling Eddie around the restaurant. Of course, Eddie could put up more of a fight than he _was_ , but he didn’t really want to sock Mike in the nose or something.

Mike was smiling, but a thin, panicked smile, one that darted between Eddie and Richie frantically.

“One meal, guys. Come on.” He looked over at Richie. “I get two weeks a year with you guys. Please?”

Richie threw himself down at the table, grabbing at his napkin. He jabbed a finger out at Eddie. “I’m not making conversation with fucking Larry Craig over here.”

“Two-year-old burn,” Eddie sniped. Shit, he was trying to be nice. _He_ was the bad guy, here. Not Richie.

“Hey Richie, what’s this sitcom you’re doing?” Mike prompted.

“Stupid fucking bullshit,” Richie replied, not taking his eyes off Eddie. His arms were crossed over his chest. “Not anything you can watch at home with the Missus.”

“Fuck, Richie,” Eddie breathed, holding his head in his hands.

“It’s a recurring role though, right? That’s got to be good.”

“Yeah I’m the boyfriend of one of the hot girls on the show. I’m a real bro.” Eddie and Richie stared at each other across the cozy little romantic table. What the fuck were they even _doing_ here? “I love to fuck snatch and make fun of her guy roommate for having good hygiene. It’s a tough acting job for me, personally, but I know guys who do more.”

“What the fuck do you want me to say, Richie?” Eddie snapped. “I don’t even _know I’m gay_ _out there_!”

“ _How the fuck do you not know_?!”

“ _Because I’m scared_!” Eddie shouted. “Because I’m scared every second of every fucking day, because I suck down my inhaler every hour, because my mother just _died_ and I was lonely and I didn’t know what to _do_ and I imprinted on the next person I saw that felt _familiar_ and _safe_. Because who I am out there is someone who’s never taken a risk in his life, who doesn’t remember that he knows how it feels to be brave, to take a leap of faith, to land safely in the arms of someone who loves him.”

Richie’s expression cracked open, just for a second. Instead of anger Eddie saw the raw pain lurking below the surface. But then Richie pulled himself together again, mask of rage easily folding back up over the pain, pushing it down, protecting it from Eddie’s prying eyes. Where he couldn’t hurt it anymore.

“I can’t fucking do this,” Richie snapped. “I’m only sticking around because I can’t afford to change my fucking flight. But I’m heading back to my hotel room and I’m staying in there watching porn on my laptop until Sunday.” He jabbed a finger out at Eddie. “If you even _breathe_ on my fucking door, I’ll shove that inhaler so far up your ass you’ll be exhaling camphor for weeks.”

“Richie-”

“No, no!” Richie grabbed his leather jacket off the back of his chair, struggling with it until the chair eventually crashed over, nearly taking Richie with it. Richie swung a foot out at it, kicking it away. He clutched his jacket to his stomach. “We could have had a good fucking life together, Eddie! We could have left together! We could have figured something out, we could have tried a dozen different strategies by now, two dozen, or we could have just stayed here with Mike, bought our own little place, had a _fucking future_! But now all we’ve got is _fucking Derry_!”

Richie was right, of course. Eddie swallowed and started to stand, not able to keep sitting if it meant staring up at Richie, pretending like he couldn’t see the tears in Richie’s eyes.

But Richie was already leaving, practically running out of the restaurant. Eddie stumbled over his chair as he tried to stand, to reach out to him, to…

To what?

Richie slammed the door open with one hand. As he tore on his jacket, he shouted his parting words back over his shoulder:

“See you in seven fucking years when it’s time for all of us to die.”


	7. 2013, Age 37

“Richie? It’s Mike Hanlon, from Derry. It’s time to come home.”

Memories surged through Richie. But one overrode them all.

“Eddie.”

“Yeah, bud. Eddie will be there.”

But that wasn’t it.

Richie held the phone out in front of him, sneering into it. “Well tell him to get fucked from his old pal Richie.”

Jabbing the red end call button was much less viscerally satisfying than slamming a receiver down in the cradle, but.

Richie stared out of his apartment window and wondered why the fuck he was in such a bad mood.

* * *

“Richie? It’s Mike Hanlon. I’m calling from Derry.”

Richie stumbled on the stairs to the club, arm shooting out to grab the handrail like his life depended on it. “What-”

“It’s time to come home, buddy. I miss you.”

“You-” Richie stumbled backwards off the stairs, hitting the sidewalk and pacing away from the club. There was something else, it wasn’t Mike, it was-

“Eddie.”

“Yeah man, he misses you too,” Mike replied. There was something in his tone. Something tight.

Right.

“Tell him to go fuck his wife,” Richie snarled.

“Richie?”

The manager of the club was hanging out the back door, waiting on him. Richie spun around. He glanced down at the phone in his hand. What… was that about?

“Hey, sorry. Had to take that.”

Richie flashed a big smile he didn’t feel (but when did he?) and jogged up the three stairs to the back door.

“Let’s get this Trashmouth motoring, right?”

* * *

“Hey Richie. It’s your old friend Mike Hanlon. I was wondering if you wanted to grab a drink with me?”

Why… why did that make Richie feel sick to his stomach? Richie pressed a hand to the wall outside the conference room, sucking in deep, uneven breaths. What was happening to him? Was he having another fucking panic attack? The meeting was going great, they loved him, why did he feel like this? Richie wiped a palm across his forehead, shaking it out when it came back damp.

“What, uh- Sorry, uh… Mike? Who is this?”

“It’s Mike Hanlon, Richie. From Derry? I thought we could get a drink, if you’re in town.”

“In town, why would I-”

Richie’s hand slipped off the wall. Then he was running for the men’s room, barely making it in time to puke in a sink. Oh, gross. Great.

“Richie? You there?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am Mike. I’m here, and I’m not _there_ , and you can tell fucking Eddie Kaspbrak that this is where I’m _staying_.”

Okay. Fuck. Why the fuck had he puked in the sink? Gross. Some bad sushi? Had to be—he didn’t get nervous like this before meetings anymore.

* * *

“-the producers think of that.”

The number on his phone wasn’t familiar. But the display said _Derry, ME._ Derry. Derry was calling him. Richie’s knees buckled, and he started to fall forward right there on the sidewalk where he was powerwalking trying to keep up with Steve’s manic energy. Luckily Steve somehow sensed this and grabbed his elbow, both of them pulling to a stop right there on the busy sidewalk in Chicago.

“Whoa, big guy. You okay there?”

His fingers were shaking. Why were his fingers shaking? Recklessly Richie jabbed the big green button on his phone and held it up to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Richie. It’s Mike Hanlon. Your old friend. I wanted to see you, man.”

Mike. Mike, from Derry. Derry. _Derry_. Richie grabbed onto Steve’s shoulder and breathed shallowly, trying to push down the nausea in his gut. Oh, fuck him, fuck this, fuck _Derry, fuck!_

“Richie? You okay?”

“Yeah,” Richie croaked. “I-”

“Richie? Who is it?”

Richie turned to look at Steve—look _down_ at Steve, more like-

Oh. _Oh_. Oh, _right_.

Oh, fuck _him_.

Richie tightened his grip around his phone with renewed vigor.

“Hey, Mike? Tell Eddie to go _fuck himself_!”

Richie hung up and shoved his phone back in his pocket. He cocked an eyebrow at Steve. “Wrong number.”

Steve rolled his eyes but started walking again, practically _jogging_ down the sidewalk with his stumpy little legs. Richie hurried to keep up.

* * *

He had smoked too many bummed menthols last night and now his entire day was going to be spent trying to scrub the taste out of his fucking mouth. Richie spat out the second mouthful of toothpaste of the day into the sink when his phone buzzed on the edge of his pedestal sink. It was from a number he didn’t know, but that shit happened when Steve gave his number out to clubs and didn’t tell him.

“State your business, jackass,” Richie answered with his usual finesse. He smacked at his tongue. Ugh. Maybe if he ate something other than coffee and air the taste would get out of his mouth. He had some pop tarts…

“Richie? It’s Mike Hanlon, from Derry. I-”

“ _Fuck_!”

Richie fumbled the phone, nearly dropping it. The taste of menthol on the back of his tongue became overwhelming and he dry-heaved. Fuck, fuck, fuck-

“Richie. Richie, I know it’s a lot. But I’m here, man. I want to see you.”

And then, something else. Something besides the fear. Something much _sharper_.

“You seriously calling me again? How many times I gotta say ‘no’ to you, man? Tell Eddie-”

“Richie, will you shut up and listen? Look man, we’ve only got three more years before the cycle starts again, and I’d like to spend some time with my friend before then, okay? So will you get over yourself and do it for me, Richie?”

Oh, fuck. The _fucking_ clown. Richie moaned and pressed his face to the mirror in his bathroom. Then he stopped and pulled back, blinking tears from his eyes.

“Wait. Fucking Eddie-”

“Eddie’s not going to be here.”

That gave Richie pause.

“I want to see _you_ , Richie. It’s been four years and I miss you, man.”

“What… why isn’t Eddie going to be there?”

“We talked about it last time he came and he agreed that it if it meant you could come back and I could get to see you, that he would sit this time out.”

“You’re… we’re splitting custody of you?” Richie laughed, banging his forehead against the mirror.

In his ear Mike laughed softly with him, but without the edge of hysteria Richie’s laugh had.

“Yeah. Apparently. Except I’m the one splitting custody of you two.”

“That makes sense; there’s no way I’m mature enough to be the parent in this scenario.”

“So will you come home, Richie?”

Richie sighed and pulled back so he could look at his tired fucking eyes. Christ, he was getting old. He had to stop bumming smokes after all his shows. Shit was going to kill him.

“Yeah, man. Alright. We’ll hit the town. Really light it up. Derry got any good gay clubs?”

Mike snorted. “It actually does have at least one. If you want.”

“Fuck no, that sounds fucking terrible. Can you imagine what the gay guys in Derry look like? I’d probably go blind from all the flannel.”

“So I’ll see you, then? This weekend?”

Richie pulled off his glasses with two fingers and rubbed at his nose.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess you fucking will. Better make it worth my while, Mikey boy.”

* * *

Fuck, it was fucking freezing. It had been dark for what felt like three hours already because that was fucking Maine in the middle of winter. He should have brought an actual coat instead of his leather jacket. Or gloves. Or a hat. Or like, literally anything weather appropriate besides a ratty hoodie with his leather jacket yanked on over it. Fuck.

But hey, there was Mike! Richie grinned as he shoved his way into the steakhouse, sighing in relief at how warm the air inside felt. Mike turned at the jangle of the door and smiled back at him, hurrying to scoop Richie up into a hug.

“You made it!” Mike said. He hugged Richie too hard, because he always hugged too hard. But Richie didn’t mind it at all: he hugged too hard right back, practically lifting Mike up off his feet (except, only _practically_ , because damn, Mike was _solid_. Wasn’t he a librarian, did Richie remember that? What right did a librarian have being so _jacked?_ ).

“Yeah, dude, well. I took pity on you, because I’m a fucking sucker, I guess. Can’t imagine how shitty spending four years with only Eddie for company must have _blown_ for you.”

“Didn’t complain last time my company _blew_ ,” a voice behind Richie commented wryly.

Richie knew that fucking voice.

He didn’t turn around. Instead he glared at Mike, shoving a hand in his chest.

“What the _fuck_ are you playing at, Mike?”

“I just wanted to see you. Both of you.” Mike held out his hands helplessly.

“It was my idea anyway,” that _voice_ said behind him again.

Richie turned slowly around, because he had to fucking face it, and he wasn’t a coward. Okay, well: he was a fucking coward, he absolutely was a coward, but the door was behind him so unless he wanted to escape through the fucking kitchens, he was going to have to face the voice whether or not he was brave.

Eddie looked depressingly good. He was pulling off dark leather gloves, black wool coat and gelled back hair making him look like some sexy mob boss from a Coppola movie. Richie tried not to focus on that, and instead focused at the way Eddie was scowling at him, and the way his eyes glimmered hopefully. Like Richie was just going to welcome him back with open arms that fucking easily.

“Fuck you,” Richie said, because he had nothing more eloquent to say. He tried to shove past Eddie, out the fucking door, but Mike grabbed his elbow and was dragging him back.

“Look, it’s snowing out-” Mike started.

“Do I look like I give a fuck?”

“You look like you forgot it was winter, that’s true,” Eddie commented, taking in Richie’s inadequate leather jacket and hoodie. Richie flipped him off.

“-so why don’t we just have dinner,” Mike finished. “Come on. One dinner. I want to see you, man. That’s not a lie.”

“You can see me without _him_ ,” Richie pointed out. “We’re not a package deal.”

Eddie crossed his arms over his chest. Richie raised his eyebrows at him, _daring_ him to try and argue otherwise. After all, it was Eddie’s fault they weren’t a package. Eddie’s fault they never could be.

“We’ve got to be together when It comes back,” Mike reminded Richie. “Think of this as a trial run.”

“Well now that you mention it, sitting through a dinner with Kaspbrak and slogging through sewer water so a demon clown can rip my limbs off does sound about equally as excruciating…” Richie mused.

“I can go,” Eddie said. He started to pull his black leather gloves from his pocket, like the weenie he was.

“Excuse me?”

Richie, Eddie, and Mike spun their heads as one, staring at the petite woman behind the lectern. It was the hostess, holding three menus in his hands. She smiled weakly at them.

“Right this way?”

Richie’s stomach growled. Well, fuck it. He was starving, this was a steak place, and maybe he could trick Eddie into ordering something loaded with sour cream or butter and banish him to the john for the majority of dinner. Richie yanked his jacket off and threw himself into a chair opposite Eddie. It meant he had to look at him, but at least they weren’t elbow-to-elbow.

“Well if I’m going to have sit through this fucking charade, I’m going to do it drunk. Garçon?” Richie snapped his fingers aimlessly, not even sure their waiter was in the room. Eddie moved to grab his hand, then pulled back, like he wasn’t sure Richie would want him touching him. Richie felt a flare of irate satisfaction of that, like _yeah, Eddie: you don’t get to touch me, anymore. You forfeited that right_.

“Don’t snap your fingers at the waitstaff; they’re going to spit in our fucking food.”

“You’re telling me how to treat servers, now? Eddie Kaspbrak? The little shit who once got a cabby fired for taking the tunnel during rush hour?”

“I didn’t-” Eddie fumed, face turning red. Richie smirked. Bet he regretted him that story now, huh? Even if he had just said it because he had known it would make Richie laugh. “Fuck you. It wasn’t like that.”

“Why, because he deserved it?”

“Shut the fuck up, Richie.”

“You going to make me?”

“Can I get you folks something to drink?”

Richie blinked, hand still up in the air, though he’d stopped snapping his fingers a minute ago. He looked up at the blandly handsome kid who was their server, smile hesitant as he glanced between the bickering men.

Mike raised his hand to get his attention and started: “Yeah, can I get a water, and a Sam Adams?”

“Whiskey, and a whiskey,” Richie ordered, holding his fingers to indicate doubles.

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Get him a water, too?” he told the waiter.

“Don’t fucking order for me.”

“So what, you want to give yourself a fucking hangover to spite me?”

“It’s my head, I’ll do whatever I want with it.”

“Can I have a Merlot, and a water?”

“No more Gee and Tees?”

“I don’t have to drink the same thing every time,” Eddie snapped.

“Does the missus not let you drink them?”

“The Merlot’s less sugar and half the carbs,” Eddie admitted. “And the tannins are good for you. They act as an anti-oxidant-”

“Jesus Christ Eds, would you shut the fuck up-”

Eddie’s fist _slammed_ down on the table, silverware clanging. “Don’t fucking call me Eds!”

Richie reared back, shocked by Eddie’s vitriol. A strand of hair had escaped Eddie’s helmet of hair gel.

Mike held his hand out. “Hey, Eddie-”

“Four years!” Eddie shouted.

Nausea churned in Richie’s gut. But he sneered at Eddie, crossing his arms over his chest. He wasn’t the one who’d gotten married. He wasn’t the one who killed their futures together. He wasn’t the one who’d been too fucking _scared_ to make them work, to find a way to make it work together.

“Four fucking years!” Eddie jabbed four fingers up, holding them splayed in front of his face like a shield. “Four fucking years, eight _fucking weeks_ , that you left me and Mike here alone. That you could have come and you _didn’t_.”

Richie grabbed the end of the table, leaning over it with both elbows out, like he was trying to keep himself from leaping over it at Eddie. And maybe he was. He certainly felt like he _could_ , right now. “We could have had _fifteen fucking years_ together,” Richie snarled. “And you’re going to bitch at me for missing _eight weeks_?”

“It’s what we _had_ , Richie.”

“It’s what you _decided_ we had,” Richie shot back. “Not me. I told you we could have had a life together. I gave you _options_. And you never even considered them.”

Eddie ran a furious hand back through his hair, combing back that errant lock. Richie hated that helmet head look. When the fuck did he start doing that? Did the wife make him do that?

“I _did_ consider them, Richie. None of them _worked_.”

“You were too scared to leave your mom-”

“I couldn’t just abandon my mother!” Eddie shouted. “What the fuck was I supposed to do? She needed me!”

“I needed you!”

Tears pricked at Richie’s eyes as he realized what his treacherous trashmouth had just said. Grabbing his napkin from his lap, Richie slammed it on the table and stood up.

“I don’t need this shit-”

“Richie, please.” Mike’s hand was on his elbow, tugging Richie back. His big brown eyes were pleading, and Richie felt his righteous anger ebbing inside of him, like the tide going out. “Man, it’s been four years since I’ve gotten to see you. Let’s just. Talk. All this can… we can wait, right? You two can just wait? I want to see you, man.”

Richie slouched inside his leather jacket, fighting against how much he _liked_ Mike, against how lonely the poor guy sounded. He was, of course: Richie knew he was. Stuck here in Derry, his whole fucking _life_ , playing lonely lighthouse attendant while they all swanned off to live their big, successful lives.

Richie’s eyes slid to look at Eddie, who was staring down at his plate like maybe he could make himself invisible if he just tried hard enough. Well: _some_ of them were living big, successful lives. Some more than others.

“Fine.” Richie begrudgingly sat back down, stretching his legs out too-far under the table, knocking away Eddie’s legs in the process. Eddie just pulled his legs in under his chair, not even sparing one vindictive kick back. He was really trying to play nice, huh? Richie bet he could crack that nut in short order. But maybe he’d save it for ten minutes and give Mike a chance to socialize a little bit. With someone _other_ than the bootlicking young Republican over there. Richie crossed his arms over his chest. “What’s new, Mikey?”

The waiter came back with their drinks, and at least Richie had that to get him through this evening. He drank steadily and sat with his body turned towards Mike, ignoring Eddie as studiously as he could.

But the problem with Mike, if you left him to his own devices, was that inevitably he started talking about It.

“-gathering everything we need for the ritual of Chüd-”

Richie was on his fifth or sixth whiskey, and they’d only gotten their salads out at this point, so he wasn’t as focused as maybe he should have been. He waved a hand in front of Mikey’s face, shaking his head. “Wait, wait: what the fuck is this shit?”

“The ritual of Chüd. It’s from the Shokopiwah people-”

“Shaq-who?”

“Shokopiwah,” Mike patiently explained. “They’re native to these parts-”

“A tribal ritual? Are you for real right now?” Richie snorted and turned to Eddie, unthinkingly. “You hearing this, Eddie? Mike wants us to smoke’um peace pipe and do a river dance.”

“River dance is the fucking Irish, you idiot,” Eddie grumbled into his wine. He was only on his second glass—probably because red wine gave him _heartburn_ , or some other middle-aged bullshit gripe. Fuck, Richie hated him.

Fuck, Richie wanted to be middle-aged with him, together, bitching about proper flossing techniques over their his-and-his sinks, arguing until they were red in the face about the right way to load their dishwasher.

Right. That was why Richie wasn’t looking at Eddie. Or talking to him. Or acknowledging his fucking existence. Without a word Richie turned back to Mike, pretending like they all didn’t just see his lapse in self-control.

“Mikey. You know that sounds fucking nuts, right?”

Mike looked between them, like Richie _or_ Eddie would buy this bullshit. Maybe if Bill was here—he always had a sense of the mystical when it came to this clown bullshit. Or even Ben, with all his studying the dark, evil histories of Derry. But Richie, Eddie, and Stan? They were the three rationalists of the group, much as it seemed ridiculous to label Eddie, the little manic hypochondriac as rational; or Richie, the class clown community college drop-out.

Of course, Aristotle said that comedy required the highest rational thought, because you first had to show your audience—without them realizing it—where the rational outcome of a train of thought would lead, and then subvert their expectations with a ninety-degree swerve.

That’s right. Richie read books. On occasion.

“They’ve encountered It before, Richie. They’ve faced it.”

“Well apparently they fucking failed, huh?” Richie pointed out. “Otherwise why’s It still here? Gnawing on kiddies every twenty-seven years?”

“We can learn from them,” Mike insisted. “We hurt It, last time, just like they did. Now maybe, with our combined experiences, we can stop It. For good.”

“Fuck this, I don’t want to talk about this right now,” Richie growled.

“You never want to talk about this,” Eddie pointed out. “Eventually we have to fucking talk about It-”

“That’s a real interesting observation coming from _you_ ,” Richie snapped. Eddie shut his mouth, muscle in his jaw flexing.

Mike held his hands over the table, like somehow he could successfully play mediator between the two of them.

“Look: we don’t have to solve it tonight. I’m just saying: I wouldn’t mind your eyes on this. I think this ritual is really something—something that could stop It.”

“You really think anything we could do would stop a psychotic magic clown devil who doesn’t obey the laws of time and space?!” Richie shouted.

The waiter was back at their table, notepad held in his hand. He stared at them. Richie met his eyes and felt a deep sympathy for this denizen of the service industry. Fuck knows he’d been in his position for years while he tried to break into comedy.

“Can I get the porterhouse, rare, with the loaded baked potato and the clam chowder?”

“Give yourself a fucking coronary,” Eddie grumbled into his menu. He raised his head just enough to look up at the waiter, pointedly _not_ looking in Richie’s direction. “The salmon with the steamed vegetables? House salad, dressing on the side?”

“You’re such a-” Richie started. But then Eddie slammed his menu down on the table and stared hard at Richie.

“Such a fucking what, Richie?”

“Pasta primavera?” Mike asked, eyes darting between the waiter and Richie and Eddie.

“Hypochondriac little _bitch_ ,” Richie finished. He was leaning across the table, leaning all up in Eddie’s space, as close as he could get.

“I’m trying not to give myself a heart attack before I’m fucking forty-” Eddie snapped.

“And uh, the Caesar salad?” Mike asked.

“We’re not going to make it to forty-one, who are you fucking fooling?”

“You don’t fucking _know that, Richie_ -”

“And, uh, another order of drinks? And waters?”

“Fuck you!” Richie shot back. It wasn’t especially witty of him, but.

“Fuck you!” Eddie shouted. And that’s why it didn’t need to be especially witty.

Mike sighed and held his head in his hands as the waiter scurried away to drop their orders off with the kitchen.

“Guys, please.”

Richie sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. This whole thing had been _Mike’s_ big fucking idea. Poor guy could suffer through the chaos he’d brought down on his own head.

* * *

The night was too cold to be outside, but Richie was drunk enough after that dinner that he needed cigarettes, and so he shrugged on his too-thin leather jacket and braced himself for the walk to the gas station a block and a half down from the Inn.

As he stepped off the bottom stair a noise from the lounge made him turn, blearily blinking the drink from his eyes. In an instant he wished he hadn’t and had just kept walking out the door. Because there was Eds, standing behind the bar with a guilty look on his face, holding a bottle of gin in one hand a shaker in his other.

They stared at each other like that fucking Spider-Man meme, where he’s pointing at the other identical Spider-Man. Absently Richie made a note to tell his ghost writer to work that into a joke, somehow. But make it punchier. Comic book shit was cool, now: he could get away with a couple comic book jokes in his act without compromising his bro persona.

Eddie’s mouth had opened, when they locked eyes. But nothing came out, and after a long minute Eddie closed it. His eyes flickered to Richie’s jacket, but surely then he noticed how Richie didn’t have his duffle bag on him. Richie wasn’t skipping town. He wasn’t a fucking coward.

Not like some people.

Richie turned his back on Eddie and headed for the door. As he walked down the hallway he raised his voice and said: “Going to get some smokes.”

“You’re going to freeze your ass off.”

Richie kept his eyes forward, footsteps steady. “Protecting your investment?”

As Richie pushed open the door to the Inn he heard Eddie swear behind him and the heavy _thump_ of glass on wood. The door, starting to fall closed behind him, was arrested in its movement by Eddie’s hand, shooting out at the last second. He was swearing under his breath as he pulled on his heavy wool coat from the coat-hook by the door, complete with hat, scarf, and gloves to boot. Richie sneered and opened his mouth to make fun of him, but before he could a knit hat was tugged down over his eyes and a scarf draped around his neck.

“You live in fucking Chicago why don’t you have any appropriate winter-wear?”

“Maybe I moved to LA,” Richie threw out there. _Fuck_ , it was fucking cold. He jammed his hands in his pockets and wished Eddie had thrown him a spare pair of gloves while he was at it.

Eddie startled at that, looking over at Richie was they jogged down the steps together and started down the sidewalk towards the gas station. “What? Did you?”

“No,” Richie admitted, easily. Eddie stared at him, baffled, before his expression descended into a scowl. He started to move towards Richie—to hit him, to shove him, to interlock their fingers, to kiss him, to- but then he stopped and just shoved his (gloved) hands into his pockets.

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you,” Richie replied on instinct. He glanced over at Eddie.

Eddie looked… good. Too fucking good. He looked all grown up. Not that they hadn’t been, last time. They’d been in their thirties, for fuck’s sake. But Eddie had always been a baby face—not in the traditional round, fleshy sense, but in a small, mousy sort of way—but in the intervening years the lines in his forehead and stubble on his jaw had grown more pronounced, ageing him until he looked like a full-fledged grown-up.

Richie wondered if he still had those dimples when he smiled. Wasn’t sure if he was ever going to see them again (wasn’t sure he could stand to).

“You look like a fucking New Yorker,” Richie pointed out. He gestured at Eddie’s knee-length wool coat, his Burberry scarf, his leather gloves. The only thing that looked out-of-place was his floppy knit hat pulled down tight over his ears, but even that looked expensive, maybe hipster-ish. Eddie looked like a… a status symbol. Like he was a professional, with money, with a career.

He looked like a fucking grown up, and Richie was still wearing the same leather jacket he’d bought himself when he got his first real paycheck as a comedian.

“I am a fucking New Yorker,” Eddie pointed out.

“You look like you cheer for the Yankees.”

“Fuck the Yankees.”

“You sing a different tune when you’re back at your apartment in SoHo?”

“I live in Queens, dickwad.”

“Avoiding the question.”

“No, somehow I remember not to cheer for the fucking Yankees,” Eddie sighed. “Go Sox.”

“Go Sox,” Richie nodded.

He didn’t mention how apparently the Sox were important enough for Eddie to subconsciously remember his undying love for even when he was living his life outside of Derry, while Richie or the fact that Eddie was _gay_ wasn’t. It probably wasn’t fair—the clown magic obviously wanted them to forget each other most of all; it didn’t give a shit about making them forget the ninth-grade algebra that they’d learned in Derry.

“You shouldn’t smoke,” Eddie said, once they were in view of the gas station. Richie snorted and didn’t reply, but apparently Eddie meant it. “I’m fucking serious. We’re too old for that shit.”

“We’re going to die when we’re forty, Eds. Who gives a shit?”

“We’re _not_ -” Eddie started, jaw clenching. But he stopped and glanced over at Richie, shook his head. Like he knew Richie was trying to rile him up and refused to take the bait. Richie scowled and shoved his fists deeper in his jacket pockets. Since when did Eddie _not_ take the fucking bait?

“Besides, I’m drunk,” Richie admitted. “I don’t… it’s just when I’m drunk.”

“So every fucking night?” Eddie shot back.

“Well I gotta take a shot of liquid courage before I climb into bed with your mom,” Richie snarked. Then he groaned and tilted his head back. “Sorry. I-”

“No, it’s alright.”

Eddie followed Richie into the gas station because it was fucking freezing out. They idled in there for a minute, blearily peering at the snacks and drinks under the harsh florescent lighting, muzzily blinking through their dual beer goggles to try and tell if anything looked genuinely appealing or if they were just drunk. Eddie ended up buying one of those one-Liter Smart Waters, like the fucking hipster he was. He cracked it and drank down a quarter of it in one drag as they headed back out into the bitter night. Richie slapped his fresh pack against his palm before peeling the plastic off it and dumping it into the trashcan by the pumps as they passed it. He went through the ritual of shaking up the pack, picking out the lucky, flipping it, then picking out the first cigarette to smoke, all while Eddie chugged his water and walked alongside him in silence.

Three, four times Richie opened his mouth, about to pick a fight. Ask about the Missus. Ask about Eddie’s precious job, that he hadn’t been willing to give up for Richie. Ask about his friends, his life, his home in Queens, ask if any of it was good, if even one scrap of it could measure up to the fourteen days a year he spent with Richie.

But Richie was drunk, and his heart was beating brokenly in his chest, and maybe all he fucking wanted, really, more than picking a fight, more than hurting Eddie back, was for Eddie to hold him again. For Eddie to touch him, to kiss him, for him to _feel_ Eddie again.

So instead Richie kept his big Trashmouth shut, and when he flicked his cigarette out on the stairs of the Derry Inn, he turned to Eddie and nodded at the stairs.

“Want a coffee?”

They slammed through the door to Eddie’s room, kissing in the hallway, in full view of any other residents of the Inn. Richie didn’t fucking care, and apparently Eddie didn’t either. Eddie kicked the door shut as he shrugged off his suit jacket, then his shirt after unbuttoning it like a fucking animal. Richie sucked at his lips as he toed out of his shoes, and they couldn’t stop _fucking_ kissing, it was like they were connected at the lips while they worked frantically to bring together the rest of them.

Eddie kissed him like he was punishing Richie. For that, Richie kissed back like he knew it, like he was saying _fucking fine, punish me, hurt me, fuck you, fuck me, fuck it all_. They yanked each other’s clothes off, their own clothes off, shoes and belts and shirts going flying. Eddie still had his socks on when he shoved Richie onto the bed, tugging down his underwear and pulling out his rock-hard cock.

Richie automatically climbed onto his hands and knees, dick throbbing between his legs, asshole clenching in eager anticipation.

Eddie stretched him out, shoving lube into his asshole like he was on a mission, avoiding his prostate most the time. Richie bit down on the whine in his throat and contented himself with fisting the pillowcases. The crinkle of a condom wrapper, that heady pause as Eddie must have been slipping the condom over his dick, pinching the end, rolling the base down until it was in place. And then that dick was brushing against his asshole, rubbing around the rim. Eddie slipped the tip in, then out, teasing Richie open. Richie pounded weakly at the pillows, hips canting desperately backwards, beginning for Eddie to just put it in, fuck him, take him, have him.

When Eddie slowly, _slowly_ pushed the length of his shaft inside him Richie wanted to howl with need. Instead he gritted his teeth and fucked back, sucking Eddie’s dick further inside of him. Eddie’s fingers were digging into his hips as he rocked against Richie, inching his dick further in with every thrust. Richie moaned like the pathetic slut he was, wanting more of it, wanting all of it, needing Eddie to be completely inside him and also fucking his _brains_ out, come on, Eds…

“ _Fuck_ , you’re tight,” Eddie gritted out. His right hand slipped up Richie’s back to press down between his shoulder blades. Richie arched up against the touch, and Eddie used exactly that opportunity to pull out and _thrust_ back in, and then do it _again._ And then _again_. Richie pounded at the pillows.

“ _Fuck_.”

“Yeah,” Eddie whispered as his hips picked up the pace. Richie kept his hips tilted high, ass in the air for Eddie to do his dirty business into. Eddie held his hips tight as he fucked in, hard and fast, pounding Richie into the mattress. Richie laid on his cheek, shoulders rolled forward, not even bothering to prop himself up on his elbows as he let his body ragdoll underneath Eddie’s jarring thrusts.

Richie whined, high and needy, before he could clamp down on the noise. Fuck, _fuck_. This was just a fuck, this was just down and dirty, it didn’t mean anything, it wasn’t an apology, this wasn’t a declaration, it was just a _fuck_ because he was _horny_ and he was a slut for a nice cock, and Eddie’s had always been such a pretty pink thing. It didn’t have to matter outside this, all that mattered was the feel of Eddie splitting him open, grazing against his prostate, jarring Richie’s body with every thrust.

Eddie’s chest folded down against Richie’s back, Eddie curling around him as far as he could (he couldn’t envelop him the way Richie could; he wasn’t tall enough, he wasn’t broad enough. But he felt so good against Richie’s back, like he was… Richie squeezed his eyes shut tight. Like he was comforting him. Like Eddie was holding him close).

Kisses rained down the middle of Richie’s back, plotting a trail down his spine. Richie keened. “I missed you,” Eddie whispered, so quiet it was deniable. He licked the sweat off Richie’s back, scratched at the patchy hair that was growing there, to Richie’s embarrassment. “I missed this.”

Richie wanted to say something about how Eddie couldn’t miss his ass, because he’d never had it before. But as Richie tried to form the thought—that Eddie had never had him like this, that this was a first for them, between them—a lump filled Richie’s throat and he couldn’t get the words out. Richie fisted the sheets harder and fought down any sounds his treacherous body tried to voice.

The pressure rose inside Richie with every thrust of Eddie’s hips, with the slide of his dick against Richie’s prostate, with the slap of his balls against Richie’s ass. Richie keened as he grabbed at the sheets, not sure if he should touch himself or hold off, try and outlast Eddie at his back. But then Eddie was reaching around, lube-slick fingers sliding over his hips, over the hair on his stomach, until he reached Richie’s cock. He tugged at him, starting an awkward rhythm, until between one thrust and the next Eddie fell into it, fisting Richie’s dick smoothly with every thrust of his hips. Richie moaned, drooling onto the sheets beneath his face.

“Fuck, fuck,” Eddie hissed at his back. He bit down on Richie’s shoulder. “Fuck, I’m gonna come-”

“Jerk me off, get me off, fuck,” Richie snapped. He didn’t want to come after Eddie.

That was just because he wanted to come with a hard dick in his ass. It didn’t mean anything more than that.

“Fuck, come on, then, fuck, come already, come on-” Eddie hissed. His fist flew over Richie’s dick, hips speeding up against Richie, _thwap thwap thwap_ of his balls over Richie’s ass driving him absolutely _feral_. Fumbling over himself Richie reached down and covered Eddie’s hand with his own, jerking his dick punishingly hard, squeezing it too-tight. But the pain felt so good, it cut through the haze of pleasure that was overwhelming him, bringing everything into sharp focus, snapping him out of the tantric daze Eddie’s dick had fucked him into.

“Fuck, hang on-” Richie hissed. “There, fuck, fuck me there-”

“Fucking come already,” Eddie growled. His hips pounded against Richie’s ass, jackhammering against him to the point of pain, to the point of too full, to the point of burning and overwhelming and-

Richie came with a low grunt, biting down hard on anything else that tried to escape him. The jizz was telling enough, spilling all over his and Eddie’s hands like a fucking fountain, coming more than he’d come in a long, long time. Fucking embarrassing, was what it was.

Eddie’s hand slipped from Richie’s dick back to his hip. His fingers ground Richie’s own come into his skin as he fucked hard into Richie’s ass, slamming and slamming against him until he groaned, bottoming his hips out against Richie’s own. Richie moaned against the feeling of Eddie flexing inside him, grinding his ass backwards as he felt it inside his asshole. Fuck. _Fuck_. He loved that feeling. Eddie’s dick _flexed_ inside him, _pulsed_ , he could _feel_ Eddie’s muscles pumping cum into the condom inside Richie’s asshole.

Richie pressed his face into the sheets and tried not to make a sound.

Eddie pulled out of him after a perfectly-timed pause—not to short, not too long. It was like the guy was counting it out in his head. Richie fucking hated it. Richie kept his face pressed into the sheets as he listened to Eddie pull the condom off himself and dispose of it. Eddie didn’t need to know shit. This was a fuck. A good fuck. And that’s all it fucking was. That’s all Eddie had made it out to be, and that was all Eddie _deserved_.

Richie rolled over, pressing his hand to his face and praying Eddie didn’t look too hard at him. His shoulders shook, but maybe that could be written off to post-sex trembling. Richie fought hard to take deep, even breaths, desperately fighting back a sob, holding his mouth open so he wouldn’t give himself away. Couldn’t give himself away, couldn’t let Eddie know.

A hand, drifting hesitantly over his trembling back. Richie flinched, and the hand moved away, and Richie regretted the involuntary movement even more than the four years of lost time. Silence from Eddie’s side of the bed. After a long minute, maybe two, maybe ten, Eddie shifted, bedsprings squeaking. Then he settled. Richie breathed and let the tears slip down his face, waiting them out, waiting for them to dry up. And then, while he was waiting, he fell asleep.

* * *

Richie stared out the window of Eddie’s room, taking in how different the view was from their usual room. He’d never really thought about it: the tree just outside “their” window, the view of the water tower in the far distance, the gas station in the middle distance. This window was on the opposite side of the Inn, facing the front of the building. He could see, if he sat up further, their cars parked across the street, and from where he was lying back against the pillows right now, the very tops of the roofs of the homes across the street from the Inn. Power lines cut through the window frame, three quarters of the way up. Then it was just sky: bright blue, morning sky. He’d watched it go from rosy to blue, and wondered the whole time at Eddie still sleeping beside him.

Usually Eddie was the early riser. Or, he had been. Back then. Richie gazed down at this new man beside him, with his hair slicked back instead of carefully parted to the side, his five o’clock shadow a permanent thing, new moles on his shoulders, new hairs on his back. Richie wondered where he’d gotten those moles: did the Kaspbrak’s go to the beach for vacation once a year? Did they have a little getaway in the Palisades, where Eddie laid in the sun, after Mrs. Kaspbrak oiled him up with SPF 100? Did Eddie wash their cars in the driveway of their home in Queens during the summer with his shirt off, beach trunks slung low on his hips, waving at the other husbands spending their weekends the same way?

Richie was staring so hard at two moles on Eddie’s shoulder that he startled when he realized Eddie was staring back. He wasn’t sure how long Eddie’d been awake.

“I should go,” Richie said, even though he hadn’t yet. He could have gone an hour before, when he’d woken up. He could have gone after they finished last night. He could have gone now, without saying anything.

They knew he wouldn’t go. Because he was fucking pathetic. Because he was still in love with Eddie Kaspbrak, married man or not. Because Richie had spent so long wanting him, a lifetime wanting him, that Richie didn’t know how to be anything other than a man who wanted Eddie. And a marriage certificate states away and a woman he’d never seen and all the Catholic guilt his parents had taught him wouldn’t quell that want, no matter how hard he wished they could.

Still, Eddie frowned up at him like Richie was serious. Like Richie was strong enough to leave his bed and the warmth of Eddie’s body behind. Eddie squinted up at Richie like he was trying to figure this out, mouth drawn down in a frown. His dimples were prominent like this. Richie wanted to kiss them, dip his tongue into them. He wanted to kiss the new moles on Eddie’s shoulders. He wanted to… he wanted.

“You could stay,” Eddie finally said. It was said like he was asking him, hoping. But then Eddie pushed himself up, eyes smoldering, and now he was waking up more, and now he was remembering the hold he had over Richie Tozier.

“Stay,” Eddie said, more forcefully this time. He reached out and stroked a hand through Richie’s hair, cupped his cheek. Richie leaned helplessly into the touch. Eddie’s hand kept going, sweeping down his shoulders, his biceps. It reached his waist and Eddie pulled at him, encouraging him forward, and Richie fell into a kiss, morning breath be damned.

When did Eddie get okay with morning breath? Was it because of his wife? Did Mrs. Kaspbrak want to kiss before they left their marital bed every morning, and Eddie had to learn to get use to the taste of stale breath every morning or disappoint his wife? Richie tried to push such thoughts away and lose himself in the kiss. Shamefully, it wasn’t hard.

The kiss grew heated, morning wood swelling into a full erection, stale breath getting licked away as they panted more into each other’s mouths. Richie grabbed Eddie and threw him against the pillows, climbing on top so he could attack Eddie’s jaw, his neck. He wanted to mark him up, to send him back to Mrs. Kaspbrak with bite marks painting a story into his skin, one that said _I don’t love you, I’m not yours, there’s someone else, and_ he _knows what I want. What I need._

Richie licked at the hollow of Eddie’s throat, tasting bedtime sweat and stale sex on his skin. Eddie moaned and bucked beneath him, and Richie reached down to rest a hand on his hip, saying _shhhh_ , he was getting there, _shhh_ , be patient. He wanted to catalogue every new mole, every new chest hair, nose around and see if there were any grey ones, yet (like there were on Richie), re-catalogue Eddie’s skin to make up for seven years of absence. But he couldn’t do that all in one morning. So Richie contented himself with sucking a hickie into Eddie’s collarbone, exactly where he liked it. He teased at Eddie’s nipples, licking and gently, _gently_ biting at them, getting him all worked up. Eddie’s hips were jerking up against him, smearing precome into his chest hair. Richie fucking loved it. He hated how much he loved it.

Eddie’s dick was still the same, at least. No new piercings or tattoos or moles to surprise him down here. Although, was that a new mole, just at the juncture of Eddie’s hip and right thigh? Richie inhaled deeply as he sucked at it, laving his tongue liberally over the thick, dark hair that covered Eddie’s thighs. Eddie smelled the same, at least. He hadn’t changed his soap in seven years. Was that a sign? Did it matter?

Richie nosed at Eddie’s dick, trying to rub his cheeks and lips and nose all over his pubic hair. Except now instead of being a soft forest of tight-and-curlies, Eddie’s pubic hair was prickly, neatly trimmed, shaved down from the sides. Richie pulled back and looked at it. Even his balls were shaved.

Richie felt tears pricking at his eyes again and he couldn’t fucking deal with _that_ , so he just sucked Eddie’s dick into his mouth and kept his eyes shut and tried not to think about the way Eddie’s pubes scratched at his nose instead of tickling it.

A few tears definitely escaped his squeezed-tight eyelashes but Eddie was kind enough not to mention it. If he noticed at all.

When Eddie came down Richie’s throat Richie reached between his legs and jerked himself, trying to make quick work of it before Eddie came back to his senses. He was close anyway—he fucking loved sucking dick, and Eddie’s…

But Eddie was sitting up, falling forward, reaching between Richie’s legs and kissing into his jaw _no, no, let me-_ Richie didn’t have the wherewithal to reply in the selfsame manner, to nip and bite _no, don’t touch me_ , or _no, I don’t need you_ , into his stubble.

“Fuck, you smell so good,” Eddie growled, nosing at Richie’s neck. “I can’t even- You drive me crazy, I could fucking, I could get it up again, I fucking could, just from sitting here _smelling_ you-” Eddie licked a stripe up Richie’s neck, tongue pressing flat and hot against his carotid artery. Richie whined and fucked up into Eddie’s fist. He jerked him so good, he jerked him how Richie jerked himself, when he was alone and cold in his stupid fucking Chicago apartment with the full-sized bed because he couldn’t fit anything bigger into his bedroom.

“I missed you so fucking much,” Eddie whispered, so quiet it was like he didn’t even say it. Except he did, and Richie had heard it. Richie spilled into Eddie’s hand, slapping his hand over his eyes. He gasped through it, through everything, body shuddering. Eddie was pressing little kisses to his neck as he jerked Richie’s spent dick slowly, the way he liked it, squeezing the last few drops of come from the head. Too soon, Richie shoved at him, moving past him so he could bury his face in his pillow.

“Richie?”

“Nap,” Richie managed to croak out. Maybe Eddie would think his throat was raw from the expert dick-sucking he’d just engaged in.

He could feel Eddie looking at him, hesitating from where he was on the other side of the bed. Richie’s back tensed against the fear that Eddie would reach out and touch him, would roll him over and witness the tears streaming down Richie’s cheeks.

But then, after a long minute, the bed sifted and Eddie stepped off it, padding his way to the bathroom. Probably to wash his hands, because God forbid he wipe them off on the sheets like a normal fucking person.

Richie pressed his face harder into the pillow and hoped the running faucet drowned out his sobs.

* * *

Richie had it all planned out. He fell asleep on top of his phone, and put it on vibrate. The alarm was set for six am, which was earlier than even Eddie’s freakish internal clock got him out of bed when he was on “vacation.” Richie could slip out of the bed, get his shit out of his room, and then he wouldn’t have to deal with anything like Eddie’s doe eyes begging him to come back to bed for one last quickie (unlikely) or questions like “will I see you next time?” ( _shut up; I dunno_ ) or “do you still love me?” (…) or “want to split a cab and give me a quick handie in the airport bathroom?” ( _yes, fuck yes, please-_ ).

But Eddie was a little shit; he’d been born a little shit and he grew up a little shit and even four years of absence couldn’t wear away all those sharp edges and smooth away the absolute little _shit_ parts of his personality. When Richie’s phone started buzzing beneath his stomach he dug it out from beneath a roll of fat (muscle? He wasn’t _fat_ , just because his stomach wasn’t _cut_ -) and tapped it off. It was perfectly quiet; there was no way Richie moved any more than a normal amount of shifting in his sleep.

But Eddie rolled over onto him anyway, one arm looping over Richie’s shoulder, face snuffling into Richie’s neck. And Richie couldn’t move.

 _Shit_. This was why he’d had a _plan_. _Exactly this bullshit_.

“Can you stay five more minutes?” Eddie murmured into the nape of Richie’s neck. Richie shivered involuntarily.

“Need your dick sucked one more time?” It was meant to be said as a joke, a witty little self-deprecating dig about how Eddie only wanted him for his mouth and ass. But Richie’s morning wood was firming up at even the thought, so maybe he was exactly as pathetic as he joked about being.

Except Eddie was snuffling against him, head shaking lightly. He pressed a kiss to Richie’s neck and Richie shuddered, heart pathetically more interested in that tender gesture than the prospect of a morning quickie.

“I just want to hold you.”

The world rushed to stillness, Richie’s ears ringing like in the aftermath of a bomb.

“Just for a few more minutes.”

Eddie held him for five more minutes. And when Richie slipped out, Eddie stared at him from the bed with his hair mussed and those baleful doe eyes watching him get dressed in silence. When Richie put his hand on the doorknob he turned, just one more time, and met Eddie’s eyes. He waited for Eddie to say something. Ask him something. But Eddie kept his mouth shut. He didn’t ask if he’d see Richie next time.

As Richie shut the door quietly behind him, he shoved down the self-loathing in his gut that said Eddie didn’t need to. They both knew what Richie was going to do.


	8. 2014, Age 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for a bunch of Eddie panic attacks. Ya know. The standard.

Richie’s breath was loud in his ear, choked little whines breaking through as Eddie raked his dick over his over-stimulated prostate. Eddie closed his eyes and held on, hips speeding up as he chased his climax. The heat of Richie felt like it was all around him, the sweat, the moisture of it all. Like they were fucking in a swamp. Eddie buried his face in the crook of Richie’s neck, feeling his scraggly beard scratching against his temple as he fucked Richie’s ass, faster and faster, until…

“ _Fuck_ ,” Eddie grunted, pumping his come into the condom. His hips twitched weakly through his orgasm as he nipped and licked at Richie’s collarbone. Richie hissed, jerking away from the touch. Eddie obligingly pulled away from him, sitting back on his heels so he could get a grip on the base of the condom as he slipped his dick out of Richie’s asshole. Richie groaned weakly as Eddie got up to chuck the condom and wash his dick and hands off in the bathroom.

He brushed his teeth while he was in the bathroom, for good measure, and took a leak, because he really didn’t feel like getting back up even though it was only like, nine-thirty at night. Eddie grabbed his iPhone from his bag as he walked naked back to the bed. Richie was already curled up on his side, snoring softly. Eddie’s eyes tracked over his back—fuck, he got hairier every year, seemed like. Especially back there. Eddie found himself smiling, against his best of intentions, as he slipped under the covers next to that sasquatch. On impulse Eddie darted forward and pressed a kiss to one hairy shoulder blade. Richie grunted softly but otherwise didn’t stir.

He wanted to flick the TV on but it wasn’t a smart TV and only had some basic dozen-channel package. Not exactly helpful for catching up on his Netflix queue (the one he kept separate from Myra, so she couldn’t complain about his viewing preferences fucking up their algorithm).

Speak of the devil… Eddie sighed and ran a hand through his hair, combing it messily back from where it’d fallen in his face when he’d been… committing adultery. Vigorously.

It wasn’t fair to call her a “devil.” She wasn’t nearly as bad as Sonia had been, after all. There wasn’t anything particularly malicious about who Myra was or what she did. She could be a nag, but he wasn’t very affectionate. She was anxious, but so was he. All those behaviors which were controlling in his mother—needing to know where he was, asking about his diet, going to all his doctors’ appointments and assiduously researching his prescriptions with him—were born out of that anxiety, not out of a cloying need to control every aspect of his life.

It wasn’t her fault the end result was the same. That was probably why he had married her, after all.

Eddie thumbed at his phone, scrolling through her messages. A lot of nonsense, and a goodnight. Eddie fired back a perfunctory “good night” in reply. He’d already told her he’d gotten in just fine, and the hotel was fine, and the conference was going great. That was enough updates for the day.

Beside him, Richie shifted, then started to turn. Hurriedly Eddie locked his phone and set it on the nightstand. When Richie reached out for him, Eddie was ready, lying back on the pillow, letting Richie drape an arm over his chest. And so Eddie started the long job of convincing himself to fall asleep, as he stared at the ceiling of the Derry Inn and tried not to think about the perfectly innocent woman tucking herself into their marital bed, content that her husband was safe and working hard for her.

* * *

They spread out at Mike’s house, passing folders back and forth between each other. Things were starting to get serious. They couldn’t just fuck off and leave all the research to Mike any longer. Another two years, at the outside, and their time was up. Of course the cycle could always start sooner—they interrupted it last time, after all. They needed to get ready now. They needed to be ready a year ago. But now was better than tomorrow.

Eddie worried at his lower lip as he scrolled through the FOIA public records request that had just gone through. The cops came out to the Rogan, Tom residence too often for the ritzy zip code. Domestic disturbance, domestic disturbance, noise complaint… Eddie tapped his fingers nervously on his laptop. Could they get her out of there, early? Call her back to Derry and… what? Tell her to lie low with Mike for the next two years and wait to die?

Eddie knew, he just _knew_ Bev wouldn’t be taking this shit if she remembered. She’d stood up to her abuser all those years ago. Killed her dad with the back of a toilet. Then stabbed him through the fucking face in the sewers.

It wasn’t dissimilar to how Eddie had stood up to his mother. Called her medicine out as bullshit, thrown it down and run out of the house. She hadn’t had the control over him, after that. Not like she’d _had_. He’d been able to live out his teenage years in relative normalcy.

Until they moved. Until he forgot. And then his mother had sunk her claws into him again, and he ended up repeating the same cycles of abuse. Because he hadn’t _remembered_. Because surely if he _had_ , he wouldn’t have done what he did. Wouldn’t have stayed so desperately tied to his mother, wouldn’t have married Myra…

Didn’t Bev deserve the chance to get out? Even if she decided, like Eddie had, that she couldn’t hide away in Derry waiting to die, didn’t she at least deserve to be the one to make that choice? In full knowledge of herself, present and past? Of her capabilities, of her capacities?

Two years. Maybe less. Eddie ran his fingers over his laptop’s touchpad, scrolling up and down, up and down, over the Rogan, Tom residence reports. Domestic disturbance. Noise complaint. Domestic disturbance. Noise complaint. Domestic disturbance. Noise…

“Fuck’s sakes, Eds, will you mute your phone like every other person under the age of sixty?”

Eddie’s head jerked up. He’d zoned out the low chime of his text tone.

“What?”

“When the fuck did you become Mr. Popular, anyway,” Richie snorted, reaching for Eddie’s phone where it was resting on Mike’s coffee table. “Did you manage to break the Loser’s curse and actually make some fucking friends?”

“No, Richie-”

Too late. Richie’s gentle humor was replaced by a scowl as his eyes flickered over the texts that were surely filling his lockscreen. After a moment he tossed the phone to Eddie, who fumbled to catch it.

“Sorry. Didn’t realize it was the Missus.”

Eddie’s eyes flickered over to Mike, who was sitting on his couch with stacks of books spread out around him. The poor guy was doing his best to look like he wasn’t paying them any mind, but then his eyes flickered up and they locked with Eddie’s. He winced. Eddie sighed and dropped his gaze to his lockscreen.

_:) (now)_

_I got both! (now)_

_Don’t worry the Whole Foods had the almond milk (1m ago)_

_Not the good-good place the okay place (29m ago)_

_I got the Krueger’s to agree to the better Italian place (30m ago)_

_The DVR recorded NCIS last night for when you come back (48m ago)_

_Do you want the kale chips or the carrot pops from the store? (1hr ago)_

_We can’t contract AIDS from the cat, can we? (1hr ago)_

_They didn’t have the almond milk you like at the bodega. (1hr ago)_

_The Krueger’s want to go out next weekend to that terrible Italian place we hate (2hr ago)_

_I think Suzanne’s cat has feline AIDS. Do you think I should report her? (3hr ago)_

“Sorry,” Eddie told Richie. “I’ll put it on vibrate.”

Richie didn’t say anything, just stared down at whatever folder he had in his lap. Eddie turned back to his laptop. He didn’t actually _do_ anything, just stared at the screen. Fuck, _fuck_.

After what felt like thirty minutes but apparently was only _three_ , Richie jumped up from Mike’s armchair and tossed his folder down on the coffee table.

“I think that’s enough reading for me for tonight! Eddie, don’t fucking get up. Mike, see you tomorrow.”

It was eight pm. Eddie sighed and stayed seated, knowing Richie _meant_ it. He listened to Richie’s boots stomp away, then Mike’s door open and shut, just a _touch_ too hard. Eddie winced and pressed his head into his hands. Fuck.

“Hey, Eddie?”

“Look, just…” Eddie sighed and lifted his head. “Just don’t?”

Mike’s brow furrowed, and he looked for too long at Eddie, like he was pondering something. Finally he nodded and looked back down at the book in his lap.

Eddie was just about to turn back to his laptop when Mike’s head jerked up and he said: “At least he’s here?”

“I said-” Eddie started, but Mike cut him off.

“Right? You two… He showed. He’s showed every time since. He knows it… you didn’t mean it. You didn’t _want_ to.”

“If I didn’t want to why the fuck did I?” Eddie snapped. He jumped up, slamming his laptop shut.

“You didn’t remember-”

“Yeah, but I never even fucking tried, did I?” Eddie started pacing around Mike’s cozy (i.e., small) living room. Eddie rubbed his forehead ( _wrinkles, Eddie-bear, you’ll get wrinkles-_ ) as he paced, fighting against the guilt churning up in his stomach, trying not to think about the look on Richie’s face when he’d seen those texts, desperate to forget for just one fucking minute about Myra, about his marriage, about what he had to _go back to_ in just a few short days. “I never fucking tried.”

Mike cleared his throat.

“What if… that… wasn’t… true.”

Eddie came to a stop by a lopsided bookcase. He turned slowly, squinting over at Mike where he sat ten feet away. Mike’s shoulders were hunched, hands folded between his knees. He wasn’t looking at Eddie, not at first, but as Eddie just _stood_ there and fucking _waited_ , finally Mike lifted his head and met Eddie’s eyes. He winced.

“ _What_.”

There was a book. A notebook. Of _course_ there was a fucking notebook. Mike and his _fucking notebooks_.

“What the fuck is this?” Eddie asked even as he flipped through it frantically. There were dates. Times. Descriptions, pages of descriptions. Titles on each page, big red X’s in the top right corner of every one of them.

“You guys tried,” Mike explained. “All the time. Back… years ago. Before your mom died.”

Eddie jerked his head up to meet Mike’s gaze. “ _What_?!”

_3-2003 Letters_

_2-2004 Flew out together, same flight_

_8-2006 Burner phones_

_3-2007 Drove out together, same car_

_10-2007 Called every day_

“What the fuck is this?” Eddie asked again, because it was the only thing he _could_ ask, in the face of such a crippling, horrible truth.

“You tried everything we could think of, to remember each other, out there,” Mike explained. “But it never worked. And then you forgot you tried.”

“But we’re… we’re here. How-”

“Why don’t you remember it when you remember everything else?” Mike prompted. Eddie nodded dumbly. “I don’t know. You guys don’t know. It must be… insurance.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this?” Eddie muttered, flipping through the notebook.

 _Four years_. Four years that Richie had left him, had refused to look at him, to come back to Derry. Four _years_ of lost time, when they only had until they were _forty_. Ten percent of their _lives,_ wasted!

“Why didn’t you tell _Richie this_?!” Eddie shouted. Mike just shook his head.

“I told you every time you tried. Eventually you both… decided to stop trying.”

“Richie wouldn’t,” Eddie muttered. “Richie wouldn’t.”

“Richie suggested it,” Mike told him. His eyes were full of warm pity, and Eddie wished he could throw it in his face, like a cup of scalding coffee. “He said it was okay. To stop trying. To just… be happy with what you did have.”

Eddie collapsed into the armchair Richie had just vacated, journal held in both hands. Shaking, he flipped open to a random entry.

_Eddie drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, hands at ten and two, eyes firmly on the road in front of him and not paying much mind to the scenery passing him by. Not that there was much to see: it was March in Maine: what the fuck was there to see besides grey skies and grey roads and grey trees and grey sludge slowly melting on grey ground. Fucking lovely. No wonder he had moved away… when was that? Didn’t matter. Mama moved them away. Now they lived in New York. Mama was going to be all over him when he got home, drilling him about his hygiene on the plane, on the hotel room, if he checked it properly for bedbugs—had he? Must have. Always did. And-_

_Some obscure band blared out on the radio and Eddie frowned, turning to look. This wasn’t what he usually listened to; he liked classic rock, like Boston or Queen. What everyone liked. What station was this? It was connected to an AUX cable? Who-_

_“Who the fuck are you?!” Eddie shouted, suddenly confronted by a man sitting in the passenger seat of his rental._

_The man—who had been leaning his head against the passenger side window, absently thumbing at what looked like a beat-to-shit iPod shuffle—jerked upright in his seat, staring wildly at Eddie. He was scruffy as fuck—was this guy a fucking hobo? Had Eddie picked up a_ drifter _?! But no: he had on glasses, he was wearing a leather jacket. Surely that meant—meant what?? Hobos didn’t have glasses? If anything, that was_ more _likely to make him a hobo. Glasses were cheaper and easier than contacts, especially if you didn’t have running water or health insurance. Eddie flipped on his blinker and started to—safely—pull off to the highway shoulder._

 _“Who the fuck-?!” the guy replied. He blinked, staring muzzily at Eddie. Was the hobo drunk? Had Eddie seriously picked up a drunk drifter? What the fuck was wrong with him?! “Who the fuck are_ you _? This isn’t my fucking car!”_

_“It’s not my car either, it’s a fucking rental,” Eddie snapped. He glanced at the hobo man. “So if you want it just fucking take it; I got the fucking insurance.”_

_“I don’t-” The hobo looked out the windows of the car, peering up at the sky like_ that _would tell him anything. “Is this fucking Maine? Are you like, my ride to the fucking airport?”_

 _“Are you heading to the airport?” Eddie asked dumbly. Maybe… maybe it was a rideshare situation, or something? Had this guy been at the hotel he was staying at, the, uh… whatever it was. Maybe… did they_ agree _to share a ride…_

_“Yeah, fuck. Bangor airport, right?” The hobo asked._

_“Yeah…” Had Eddie really forgotten offering this guy a ride? “What’s your name?”_

_“Richie. What’s yours, Pollack Joe Pesci?”_

_“Fuck you. Eddie.”_

_“Eddie what?”_

_“I don’t have to fucking tell you that,” Eddie snapped. “I don’t even know you.”_

_“I don’t know you either, man.” Richie sucked at his teeth, looking Eddie up or down. “Why are you taking me to the airport?”_

_“I don’t fucking know!” Eddie shouted. “I guess because I was heading to the airport and you took advantage of me.”_

_“Took advantage of what, your kind and generous nature?”_

_“Fuck you.”_

_“Were you trying to?”_

_Ice water plunged down Eddie’s spine. He backed away from the other man, pressing his shoulder into the car door. His seatbelt was still buckled. He’d, he’d have to-_

_“What? No. I’m- I’m not…”_

_“Yeah, yeah: that’s what they all say,” this guy, Richie, was saying. He was looking Eddie up and down, his eyes kept looking at Eddie’s_ lap _, like-_

 _Eddie bolted out of the car, even though they were at the side of the highway, even though he_ knew _how dangerous that was. He scurried around the back of the car, trying to simultaneously put distance between himself and the highway and himself and the strange man who was_ soliciting _him in his rental car._

 _Or, the opposite of soliciting, whatever that was. The man who thought Eddie was soliciting_ him _. Eddie shivered. Shuddered! Shuddered. Not shivered._

_“Stay the fuck away from me,” Eddie warned the hobo man, Richie, as he stepped out of the car. Richie rolled his eyes, holding both hands up._

_“I thought you were gonna fucking force me to blow you, dude. I’m not the predator, here!”_

_“I wasn’t- I didn’t- Why would you think that!”_

_“I don’t know, some uptight Michael Shannon bitch was giving me a ride, I figured why_ else _would he be doing it!”_

_Eddie cast his mind around for the reference. Fucking Boardwalk Empire, the repressed Catholic guy? “Hey, fuck you!”_

_“I’m good, thanks!” Richie waved a hand at him._

_Tires on gravel. Eddie spun around, automatically jumping back from what he was sure was about to be one more fucking statistic of a pedestrian getting splattered on the side of the highway. But it was a beat up old Woodie, pulling off onto the shoulder behind them. A helpful motorist assuming they were broken down? Could be—rural Maine still had people like that. Eddie still backed up another step, hands curled into fists at his sides. Like that would do any fucking good._

_A black man stepped out of the car, forearms hanging lazily over the driver’s side door. He smiled sadly at them._

_“Hey Eddie. Hey Richie.”_

_“How-” Eddie started._

_“Hey, who the_ fuck _-” from behind him._

_“It’s Mike Hanlon. From Derry. Remember?”_

_Eddie gasped, cradling his head in his hands. Fuck,_ fuck _! The… his whole life… his childhood… Richie! He knew Richie! Richie was his friend, Richie was his-_

 _“_ Fuck! _”_

_Eddie spun around. Richie had fallen to his knees by the side of the rental car. Oh, fuck, he was puking. Eddie hurried over, even as his nose curled up in distaste._

_“Come on, guys. You can follow me back. We’re only about ten miles over town limits.”_

Eddie’s eyes were burning. He reached up and wiped them shamefully, trying to avoid looking over and seeing the full force of Mike’s sympathy until he could stand to face it. Eventually he closed the notebook and lifted his head.

“Why are you telling me this _now_?”

Mike shrugged. “I just… Feel bad, you know? You guys knew about it before, you just… keep forgetting.”

“You should fucking _open with this_ ,” Eddie told him, shaking the notebook at him. “Every time we come to fucking Derry, when we have that stupid fucking dinner, you should be like ‘oh hey guys by the way Eddie _didn’t_ just sit on his fucking _dick_ this whole time, he fucking _tried_ to get out of here with you, Richie, it just never _worked_!’” Eddie jumped up, pacing the room. “What… what exactly are we supposed to… Mike, if this magic bullshit is this strong, what the fuck are we even _doing_ here?” He swept an arm out to encompass all the research and files and books strewn across Mike’s cramped living room. “This shit’s going to win, Mike! If it can erase our memories so selectively that it does the most fucking damage, why… how do we know it’s not just erasing the answer from our brains! How do we know we’re ever gonna find it? And remember it when we do!”

“There are rules,” Mike insisted. He grabbed another notebook, his big History of Derry notebook where he’d been meticulously recording past incidents of clown-related violence through the decades, and centuries. “We’ve been figuring them out. Even magic has to follow some rules. Like all living things-”

“Yeah yeah, forms and bullshit. But that’s not a memory-whammy!” Eddie pointed out. “That’s… that’s rules for Its physical body. What about this shit! Mental shit! Mike, It could suck the memories right out of our brains the second we step foot in Neibolt!”

“But It didn’t,” Mike argued back. “It didn’t, last time.”

“Maybe because It thought we were fresh meat! Maybe now It’ll take us more seriously!”

“But It doesn’t, in here. When you’re in Derry. And when I call you back. You remember.”

“But not everything, apparently!”

“Do you remember the one you just read? Now?”

Eddie paused, thought.

He did. He remembered that fucking car ride. Remembered before—which Mike hadn’t written down. He remembered him coming up with the plan—him! Not Richie! And insisting they try it out. He remembered… he remembered giving Richie a searing kiss before they got into the car, gazes fearful, hearts hopeful. Richie’s hand on his thigh as they drove over the Derry town line. Talking to each other, shouting the names of their friends, repeating facts of themselves over and over to each other, until…

The words fading from their mouths.

Richie’s hand slipping from his thigh.

Quiet, as one of Richie’s playlists played in the rental car.

Mike was smiling at him, cautiously. “You see? It can’t keep it from you. Not all the way. There’s rules.”

“I have to…” Eddie’s grip tightened around the notebook. “Can I steal this?”

Mike nodded. “Yeah. Yeah of course, man. You remember, once I tell you. The whole time. So you won’t forget to give it back or anything. Not before you leave.”

“Great,” Eddie muttered. The concern hadn’t even occurred to him.

Eddie pulled on his coat and grabbed Richie’s for good measure (idiot was probably freezing his nuts off, storming off without his jacket). He didn’t want to go to the Inn yet, though. He knew Richie was there and Richie had told him _not_ to follow him. So Eddie plodded off to an all-night diner where he ordered a side order of toast and coffee. Mike’s notebook spread open on the tacky diner table before him, pages and pages of meticulously recorded memories. Events.

 _Experiments_ , Eddie’s mind whispered.

Mike had been using them like guinea pigs. Experiments. Testing the bounds of Its magic.

Eddie shuddered. Then he bent his head to read.

 _“I’ve got an alarm programmed into the phone,” Richie promised him. “Tomorrow, nine am. Chicago time, so you’ll already be at work._ Text Eddie _. And you’re the only number in here.”_

_“You won’t know why, or who-”_

_“Yeah, but I’ll be curious enough to find out, right?” Richie waggled his eyebrows like this was all in good fun. But Eddie could see the real fear behind those coke-bottle glasses. So Eddie reached up and dragged him into a kiss, and pretended not to notice how desperately Richie kissed back._

_Going back to work after a trip always sucked. Eddie didn’t know why the hell he kept taking trips as often as he did, he was always miserable afterwards. Probably picked up a mild cold every time he was on the plane. Eddie sighed and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, watching the light six cars in front of him, ready to punch the gas as soon as it turned._

_A phone rang. In his briefcase._

_Eddie’s eyes flickered to his car’s display. It wasn’t his phone—that was hooked into the OnStar in his car, hands-free. Because that was safer, every study showed-_

_Had he accidentally picked up his mother’s phone? No: that wasn’t her ringtone, and she only even had it for “emergencies.”_

_What the fuck?_

_With one last glance at the still-red traffic light, Eddie lunged for his briefcase, fumbling around inside it until his hands closed around what felt like a cheap-ass flip phone. Pulling it out, Eddie was able to confirm that indeed, it was a cheap-ass flip phone._

Burner phone _, his brain said, after seeing too many episodes of_ The Wire _. Shit, shit! Why did he have a burner phone? Why was it_ ringing _? Did someone drop this in his briefcase this morning? But he hadn’t_ been _anywhere yet. Was this from the airport? Oh, God: had he smuggled drugs? Was he a_ mule-

_“Hello?” Eddie answered the phone, a world of difference from his usual polite greeting._

_“Hey, uh…”_

_A guy’s voice. Sounded uncertain. Not exactly barking orders. Maybe this was just a mistake?_

_“Are you Eddie?”_

_Eddie slammed the phone shut and threw it down onto the floor of the passenger side. Then he lunged forward and scrambled for it._

_A car behind him laid on its horn. Eddie jolted up, twisting something in his neck, fucking great, fucking wonderful. Light was green, of course it was- Eddie slammed on the gas, waving one hand up at the driver behind him in apology. Fuck, see?_ This _was why he had hands-free, this was why-_

_Eddie thumbed at the phone, pulling up the last call. He jammed the send button and held the phone up to his ear (no use trying to figure out where the fucking speaker button was on this cheap piece of shit)._

_“Hello?”_

_“Who the fuck is this?” Eddie snapped._

_“Wh- You called me!” a man’s voice spluttered on the other line._

_“You called me first! Thirty seconds ago!”_

_“Did… uh…”_

_“What’s your name, asshole?” Eddie prompted with an eyeroll._

_“Richie. What’s yours, dickhead?”_

_“Eddie. You remember calling me now?”_

_“Ed…” the guy trailed off. Eddie scowled._

_“This isn’t your phone?”_

_“What?”_

_Eddie sighed. He would pinch the bridge of his nose except he was fucking driving and holding a cellphone in one hand like a fucking dumbass teen or something._

_“This phone, that you called me on? That I found in my briefcase? It’s not mine.”_

_“Why’s it in your briefcase then?”_

_“I don’t know that’s what I’m trying to-” Eddie pulled the phone away from his mouth and screamed through clenched teeth. Just for a minute. He put the phone back to his ear. “Alright, if you don’t need me, I think we’re done here.”_

_“Have a nice life, Edward.”_

_“Don’t fucking cal-” but the guy had already hung up._

_Eddie rolled his eyes and threw the phone into his briefcase. Some kind of ridiculous mix-up, clearly. Someone must have dropped their phone into Eddie’s briefcase, thinking it was their own. That was all._

_When he got home that night Eddie carried his suitcase to his walk-in closet, setting it down by his feet as he shrugged off his suit jacket, undid his tie, tugged off his belt. He glanced down at the suitcase, then frowned down at it. What was he doing with it in here? He usually left it at the front door…_

_That phone. From this morning. Someone had called him on this phone this morning._

_Eddie held the phone in his hands, but the memory was already fading, and it wasn’t important, anyway. Eddie reached up for the shoebox he kept behind all the other shoeboxes. Inside was scores of cash, random slips of paper, ticket stubs, things he didn’t really think about. Eddie pulled the battery out of the back of the phone and tossed the two pieces into the shoebox._

_Huh, why’d he bring his suitcase in here? He didn’t normally do that. Eddie sighed and carried it back out into his bedroom, where he sat down on the bench at the foot of their bed to untie his shoes. He could hear his mother puttering around the kitchen. Eddie held his shoes in his hands and stared at the bedroom door, mind a million miles away. But where, exactly, that was, he couldn’t quite remember._

Eddie let the waitress refill his mug with decaf as his leg bounced under the table. He stared at Mike’s notebook with an abject hate. Hate for himself, hate for this situation, hate that he couldn’t hold on, that he couldn’t remember, no matter how hard they had _tried_. He had thought he had a handle on it. Thought that there were only _two_ Eddie’s he had to contend with being: NYC Eddie, who was a gay man so repressed he thought he was straight, in a sexless, unhappy marriage to a woman who reminded him of his mother; and Derry Eddie, who was his whole self, if he’d never forgotten his friends, if he’d never forgotten what it was like to be _brave_. But it turns out _both_ those Eddie’s were incomplete. Derry Eddie had thought he was too much of a coward to try and be with Richie. Derry Eddie had thought he wasn’t as brave as he could be, had thought he’d let Richie down, had let them both down. But he… He had been braver.

For all the good it had done them. Eddie dumped two packs of Splenda into his coffee and stirred it. Fuck. _Fuck_.

Eddie leaned back in the plastic diner booth and sighed. As he sipped at his fresh cup of coffee he considered his options. He wanted to tell Richie. Of _course_ he wanted to tell Richie. But was he telling Richie because he wanted to win an argument? Because he wanted to _redeem_ himself, somehow? Because he wanted to free himself of the guilt of coming back here every six months to commit adultery with his best friend?

(But it did, didn’t it? Free him? He had tried, he had tried _everything_ , to get out before it was too late. Everything short of staying in Derry for the rest of his life, like Mike. Didn’t that alleviate some of the guilt? That he’d tried to fix his life, run away with Richie, long before he was ever married to Myra? That it was only thanks to a cosmic vendetta against him and his six best friends that he ended up stuck in a life where he married her?)

(Would it matter to her? If she knew all that, if she believed all that, would she be less hurt? No, no. She wouldn’t. And Eddie couldn’t hold that against her. Of course it would hurt. Of course she could ask ‘But when you remember, when you go back to Derry, do you have to be with him? Do you have to sleep with him?’ And of course the answer was no, no he didn’t.)

Eddie tossed too much cash onto the diner table and left, notebook tucked securely under one arm, Richie’s jacket draped over it. He knew what Richie would want him to do, no matter what Eddie’s motivations were for doing it.

The TV was on in their hotel room, Richie bingeing whatever stupid basic cable show he loved to watch (that Eddie complained about but found himself getting sucked into right alongside him, when they both awoke from nightmares at three am and couldn’t get back to sleep). Richie glanced at him when the door opened, then looked quickly away.

“Brought your jacket,” Eddie told him.

“Thanks.”

Eddie sighed, setting the jacket on the chair by the door. Nothing to do but say it.

“Look, Mike gave me something. And I need you to know, I’m not showing you this to justify myself or alleviate my guilt or win the moral high ground or…”

The TV fell silent as Richie muted whatever was on it, squinting suspiciously at Eddie across the room. Eddie kicked off his shoes and shrugged out of his coat as he made his way cautiously to the bed.

“Just to be clear. I don’t… This isn’t about me. It’s because I think you’d want to see it.”

Richie’s gaze had latched onto the notebook under Eddie’s arm and he gestured impatiently at it. “What the fuck is it?”

“I didn’t remember. Until Mike showed it to me…”

“Well come on, stop fucking hedging, what is it?”

But Eddie pulled the notebook to his chest as he sat alongside Richie on the bed. “I need you to understand: I’m showing you this because you hated _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind._ ”

Richie blinked, face going slack with grief, just for a second. Then he snatched the notebook out of Eddie’s hands and started flipping through it.

“What? What the shit-”

“We tried,” Eddie whispered. “We tried over and over again. Before Mom died.”

Richie was flicking frantically through the pages, breath coming faster.

“We tried.”

_“Edward Kaspbrak speaking?”_

_“Eddie? It’s Mike Hanlon. From Derry. I’m calling to remind you who you are.”_

_The light in front of him was red. Pennywise the clown, red nose, red lips, red gashes down his cheeks, over his eyes, red hair, red balloons- The light in front of him was red. -those red balloons a triangle of red balloons the clown the clown with the red nose- The light in front of him was red_ EDDIE, BRAKE _!_

_The antilock brakes kicked in under his foot, pumping and pumping as his SUV skidded to a halt a whole car’s length over the fucking line. The pedestrians gave him dirty looks as they crossed around and in back of his car, but at least he wasn’t in the middle of the fucking intersection._

_“Mike?”_

_“Yeah, Eddie. I’m calling to remind you that I exist. And Richie exists. Remember? You were in Derry yesterday.”_

_A flash of pain in his temples. Up the left temple, tracing over to the right. Was he having a fucking embolism, was there a clot in his veins, was he feeling a clot plodding its slow, slow course through his arteries, over from one side of his head to the other, where eventually it would reach a vein too small for it, where it would stop it up, where the vein would pop under the pressure, blood filling his brain, giving him a stroke, paralyzing him on one side, stopping his breathing, his breathing, his breathing, his inhaler, where was his inhaler, no, his inhaler was fake! His inhaler was a placebo, but then why couldn’t he breathe-_

_“I remember,” Eddie choked out. Then he shook himself. Slapped his own cheek. “Fuck. Yes! I remember!”_

_Mike chuckled on the other end of the phone. “Okay, Eddie. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.”_

_“Okay. Yeah! Okay, Mike. Tomorrow!”_

_Right: the plan. Tomorrow! And maybe it would be easier tomorrow, maybe Eddie would remember more, remember faster, maybe it would last long-_

_A horn blared behind him. The light that his car was practically under was green. Eddie lifted his hand to flip off the car behind him as he peeled out into the intersection. “I fucking heard you, I’m going!”_

_It was weird that Eddie hadn’t been focused on the light itself. He must still be a little tired from that work trip he just got back from._

* * *

_“Edward Kaspbrak speaking?”_

_“Eddie? It’s Mike Hanlon. From Derry.”_

_The coffee slipped from Eddie’s hand and fell to the sidewalk in front of him. The other New Yorkers walking tight with him swore and jumped back, a maelstrom of cursing whipping up from the eye of the storm, Eddie Kaspbrak. But he didn’t notice, because his brain was busy draining out his fucking ears._

_“Mikey?”_

_“That’s right. You remember me? And Richie?”_

_Richie. Oh, fuck._ Richie _._ Beep beep, _Richie,_ I fucked your mom _, Richie,_ Ready to get your ass handed to you at Street Fighter _, Richie,_ Get out of the fucking hammock, _Richie,_ This doesn’t smell like caca to me, señor _, Richie Richie Richie-_

 _“Mike. Oh, fuck,” Eddie fell against the wall of whatever building he was next to, pressing one hand to his knees. Oh,_ fuck _._

_“Yeah, Eddie. You got it?”_

_“I… Fuck. Fuck. Yeah, I got it.”_

_“Okay. I’m going to call you again tomorrow. You remember?”_

_“I remember,” Eddie gasped._

_“Okay. See you, Eddie.”_

_A man shoved into him, sending Eddie stumbling forward, only keeping his balance because he already had one hand on the wall. Eddie waved a hand after him, “Why don’t you watch where you’re going, asshole?!” and got a “Why don’t you get off the fucking sidewalk if you’re gonna have a smoke break?!” in response._

_Which was a good point. What the fuck exactly was he doing standing against a building? Fuck, had he dropped his fucking coffee. Eddie swore to himself and jogged back the way he had_ just _come. There goes twenty fucking bucks, apparently. Great morning._

* * *

 _Eddie’s phone rang and a chill went up his spine. He pulled it out and stared at it without answer, instead placing it on his text and eyeing the caller ID. It just said_ Derry, ME _. Derry. Why… Why… Eddie’s breath caught in his throat, airways constricting. He wheezed, hands fumbling over his pockets. What… What was he looking for… did he need a Xanax? Was he having a fucking panic attack? Did-_

_Eddie thumbed at the phone before it went to voicemail._

_“Hello?” he answered, voice trembling. It was just an area code, it was just a city name, he was catastrophizing, like his therapist always said, it was just a phone call, it couldn’t hurt him, it couldn’t kill him-_

_“Eddie? It’s Mike Hanlon. From Derry.”_

_Eddie moaned and collapsed forward in his work chair, dropping his head between his knees, trying to fucking_ breathe _. He needed his inhaler. He fumbled with his pockets, looking for- It was a placebo. His fucking inhaler. It wasn’t real, it was a_ fucking _placebo, but he still couldn’t breathe, he still couldn’t breathe-_

 _Eddie sucked down two puffs from his inhaler. Suddenly he could breathe again, just a little better. It was a placebo. It worked. It was just a placebo, he_ knew _it was a placebo, but it still worked._

_“I remember,” Eddie managed to wheeze out._

_“You okay, Eddie?”_

_“I’m okay,” Eddie croaked. “I’m okay.”_

_“Okay. I’m going to call you again tomorrow. Remember the plan?”_

_“Right. Right.” The plan. Richie and Eddie had come up with the plan- Richie. Richie, Richie, Richie, his everything, his whole world, he had_ forgotten Richie _, how could he_ ever _forget Richie, oh fuck, he had to hold onto him, he had to remember-_

_“Talk to you tomorrow, Eddie.”_

_“Bye-” Eddie started to say. The line went dead._

_Who had he been talking to?_

* * *

_Eddie’s phone was ringing and he was running for the bathroom, grabbing for his pills. He needed something, he needed something, this was something bad, someone was calling him about something bad, it was, it was his mother- no, she was just in the next room- it was something bad, someone had died at the office, he was fired, his car was stolen, he needed_ some of his fucking pills!!

_“Hello?” Eddie asked even as he dry-swallowed a Xanax. It was alright, it was eight pm, he could just sleep it off. Hopefully that’s exactly what he did._

_“Eddie: It’s Mike Hanlon. From Derry.”_

_Eddie dropped his phone. Thank fuck it landed on the orthopedic bathmat instead of the tile. Eddie started crying, climbing into his bathtub, away from the phone. He remembered, he remembered fucking Derry, he remembered the clown, Pennywise, Pennywise the dancing clown, with his red nose and red lips and gaping maw, his teeth, all the teeth-_

_Mike’s voice drifted up tinny from his phone._

_“Eddie? You there, buddy?”_

_Tears rolling down his cheeks, Eddie fumbled forward with shaking hands and reached for his phone. “Mikey?”_

_“Hey, there you are. Hey, Eddie. You okay?”_

_“No,” Eddie sobbed. “Mikey, I remember it, I remember the fucking clown-”_

_“Hey, hey. It’s okay. You remember me though, right? And Richie? You remember your friends?”_

_Richie._ Richie _. He_ loved _Richie. Richie loved_ him _. Eddie remembered kisses, whisper-soft touches, blunted nails scraping against skin, beard burn and early-morning giggling. Warmth, and love._

 _And Eddie remembered cold, and damp. He remembered the dark of the sewers, he remembered horror, and blood, and fear, pure, complete, all absorbing, obliterating_ fear _._

_“Mikey…”_

_“Okay, okay. Don’t worry about it, Eddie. I’m going to go, now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”_

_Eddie moaned, but nodded. Then he remembered Mike couldn’t see him on the phone. “Okay. Mike.”_

_Eddie blinked and he was in the tub in his clothes, holding his phone in his hands. His Xanax bottle was sitting open on the side of the sink. Fuck, had he taken one? He felt like shit, like he was halfway through a panic attack. But he couldn’t remember if he’d taken one. Fuck._

_Eddie put the bottle back in the medicine cabinet because he wasn’t about to risk double-dosing on benzos. Then he changed into his pajamas and opened up a symptom diary, trying to practice mindful de-escalation like his therapist had taught him._

* * *

_“Eddie: It’s Mike Hanlon. From Derry.”_

_“Eddie: It’s Mike Hanlon. From Derry.”_

_“Eddie: It’s Mike Hanlon. From-”_

_“Eddie: It’s Mike Ha-”_

_“Eddie: It’s Mi-”_

_“Eddie: It-”_

_“Eddie-”_

_“Eddie-”_

_“Ed-”_

_“Ed-”_

_“Ed-”_

_“Eds.”_

_“Eds.”_

_“Eds.”_

_“Eds.”_

_The door to the bathroom stall in the company gym slammed inward as Eddie flung himself into it, heaving. He couldn’t throw up though, he couldn’t-_

_“Mike-” Eddie croaked over the line._

_“Hey Eddie. It’s Mike. Remember me?”_

_“I can’t do this,” Eddie gasped._

_“It’s okay, Eddie-”_

_“I can’t-” He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, he needed- what did he need? Inhaler, he needed his fucking inhaler, where-_

They’re gazebos. They’re bullshit!

 _“I can’t do this,” Eddie moaned. He grabbed his head, feeling like it was splitting open. Numbness spread up and down the left side of his scalp, down his left arm. God,_ God _, he was having a heart attack, he was- Panic attack, this was a panic-_ what if it wasn’t, what if it’s a heart attack, statistically speaking- father died young- family history- _“Mike-”_

_“It’s okay, Eddie. I can-”_

_“Don’t call me again,” Eddie moaned. He knocked his forehead into the plastic stall partition, metal stop rattling in its holder. Then again, and again. “Don’t call me until next time, Mike, I can’t- I can’t-”_

_“It’s okay, Eddie.”_

_Eddie burst into tears, banging his head against the partition. With his left hand he reached up and covered his face, moaning into the phone._

_“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “Tell Richie I’m sorry.”_

_“Hey, hey: this was just a try-”_

_“Mikey, my head…”_

_“Hey, hey: Eddie. I’m going to hang up now. You’re going to forget all about me.”_

_“Okay,” Eddie whimpered._

_“I’ll see you in five months, Eddie. It’s okay.”_

_“Bye, Mik-”_

_Eddie dropped his hand from his face, stared at his phone’s homescreen in his hand._

_Why was his heart rate so high? Had he- No, he was in his suit, he hadn’t been working out. Eddie stared at his FitBit, then held his fingers up to his throat. As if feeling his pulse would give him a more accurate reading than the green laser on his wrist, but the motion was comforting, familiar. His hands were tingling—had he had a panic attack? He didn’t…_ remember _… Eddie shook out his hand and breathed deeply. Must be the stress. Fumbling in his pockets, Eddie pulled out his Xanax bottle and did a quick eyeball estimate. Didn’t look like he’d taken any… But just to be safe… Pulling one out, Eddie snapped it in half and swallowed it dry. Whatever the fuck it was, it was over now. Okay. Back to work._

Richie’s eyes were red when he looked up from Mike’s notebook. Eddie knew he remembered, now.

“I’m sorry,” Richie croaked. Immediately Eddie started shaking his head.

“No. No. This wasn’t about that. I’m not trying to win an argument-”

“No, I’m-” Richie pulled his glasses off so he could wipe at his eyes. One broken sob escaped his throat before he collected himself, sniffing loudly. He dropped the glasses back on red-rimmed eyes as he raised his gaze back to meet Eddie’s. “I was the one who quit. I remember now.”

Eddie climbed into bed with Richie and grabbed his shoulders. “You were the one who convinced me to try in the first place. You were the one who wanted to try _every time_.”

Richie swept in and kissed Eddie, and Eddie kissed back with all the love in his heart. All the love he held for Richie, and no one else. It was no wonder he couldn’t love Myra the way she needed to be loved; it was no wonder she texted him constantly, she was always searching for scraps of affection from him, she was always asking him to sign off with “I love yous” and using pet names with him. She wanted to feel that love from her husband, but her husband had already given every ounce of love inside of him away to someone else. To a man who didn’t even know he _had_ all that love fifty weeks out of the year.

“You stopped because of me,” Eddie remembered. His hands were cupping Richie’s jaw. He swept his thumbs over Richie’s cheekbones, wiping away the tears that kept spilling there. Fuck, he wished he could keep Richie from ever crying again. Or at least, only crying when he was happy, like when Eddie did something sappy to surprise him, or because he was so fucked-out and exhausted he couldn’t help it.

(Or like when Eddie proposed to him, like if they were to get married one day—they could do it, it just became legal all over the country that summer, they could go off together, get married just as much as Eddie and Myra were married, it was legal, it would be legal in every state, no matter where they lived-)

“I said-” Richie started, but Eddie kissed his self-flagellation away.

“You stopped because of me. Because I couldn’t take it anymore. I know you did.”

Richie breathed out shakily. Pressed his forehead to Eddie’s. They sat there, eyes closed, Eddie’s thumbs gently stroking over Richie’s cheeks, foreheads rolling softly together. Richie felt so warm, in front of him, where they were touching, around him. His hands were on Eddie’s waist, just resting lightly where they had drifted while they were kissing. Eddie wished time would stop for them right here. Eddie wished he could spend the rest of his life like this. Eddie wished he didn’t have to, because he would know he had Richie to come home to, because Richie was his, because he was Richie’s, because fate and circumstance stopped trying to rip them apart.

Richie grabbed Mike’s notebook and flung it off the bed. Eddie glanced after it, “Hey, Mike wanted that back-” but Richie was grabbing for Eddie, kissing him fiercely.

“Fuck me,” Richie breathed.

It was hard to say no to that. Eddie stripped his clothes as fast as he could, Richie doing the same (but faster, because he was already in his sleep clothes). Richie grabbed back onto Eddie as soon as they were naked—didn’t even wait for Eddie to pull his socks off—dragging him down with two arms wrapped around his neck. Eddie moaned into Richie’s mouth, letting himself be dragged down, clambering on top of Richie, even as Richie’s legs fell open to let Eddie settle between them. Richie sucked Eddie’s tongue into his mouth with a needy whine, causing Eddie’s hips to jerk hard against Richie’s, soft dicks rubbing up against each other as they started to take notice.

Richie pulled back just long enough to spit into his hand, which Eddie wanted to complain about, but then Richie was kissing him again and wrapping his one, big hand around both their dicks. And it _did_ feel a lot fucking better with some slickness on his hands, so Eddie kept kissing Richie and swallowed down his objections. Though he did nip lightly at Richie’s lower lip, tugging at it before diving back in to sooth it with his tongue.

“Do you get hard this fast for your wife?” Richie growled.

A shot of guilt tempered Eddie’s arousal. He shoved at Richie, refusing to meet his eyes. “Asshole! What the fuck?”

But Richie held him in place, one hand on his ass, the other working his dick. It was a pretty fucking effective way to keep him from moving away. He leaned in to nip at Eddie’s jaw, drag his teeth down Eddie’s neck. Eddie shuddered, eyes rolling back in his head, dick twitching and swelling more in Richie’s grasp.

“She doesn’t work you like this, does she? Is she rough with you?”

“Richie, stop. No.”

“Tell me you love me more than her.”

Eddie turned his head away, but Richie just used the opportunity to suck at Eddie’s neck just the way he loved it. Eddie groaned, torn between his love for Richie and his guilt. Because whether or not this whole situation was cosmic fuckery they had no control over, what they were doing, here, right now, in this rickety POS bed in the Derry Inn: _that_ they could control. This was their _choice_ , which they could _choose_ not to do, and they were _choosing_ to carry on with in spite of everything.

“Can you even get it up for her?” Richie whispered. “Do you have to fuck her from behind? Does she take it up the ass for you?”

“Richie, shut _up_!” Eddie shoved him away, finally finding the strength within himself to fall backwards. They separated on the bed, Eddie bouncing to a rest on his ass, Richie propped up on his elbows with a mean glint in his eye. Eddie sighed and laid back, throwing an arm over his eyes.

“Richie-”

“Forget it,” Richie said. After a moment he got up from the bed and strode over to the bathroom. The door clicking behind him sounded like a jail cell door sliding shut.


	9. 2016, Age 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Discussions of various ways to die by suicide, but there is NO attempt made.

They met at the O’Hare airport, bane of Eddie’s fucking existence, as Richie had heard over and over again as they planned their flights after Mike's last call. But the little twerp refused to fly Delta and all the direct flights were Delta, for obvious fucking reasons: thanks Atlanta. So him and Richie found themselves reuniting in the country’s single worst fucking airport, with three hours to kill before their flight (because only an idiot booked a layover in O’Hare without hours and hours to spare).

They converged together at the Starbucks closest to their eventual gate. Right now it was showing info for a flight to Cleveland. Richie set the napkin holder back down on the coffee bar with a heavy clunk. He looked at Eddie with bloodshot eyes through glasses that were too thick and somehow not thick enough.

“Do you really need more caffeine?”

Eddie glanced over at the baristas, throat bobbing like he did, he really did. Richie shook his head.

“Let’s get a fucking drink.”

They walked down the gangway of O’Hare, peering around at the chain restaurants and Hudson bookstores and little pseudo-bodegas that sold the most questionable sushi Richie could imagine. He almost considered stopping and buying a container of it, just to really fuck Eddie up. But he didn’t really want to be stuck on a three-hour flight with food poisoning, so Richie squared up and ignored the bodega as him and Eddie kept scouting.

They finally found a stand-alone bar that wasn’t the bar at the Chili’s Too or Wolfgang Puck Express. Richie stuck out a hand and ordered a whiskey and a beer for himself. He was about to order a Gee-and-Tee for Eddie before he remembered. He pulled his hand back.

“Gee and Tee,” Eddie said. He glanced over at Richie and shrugged. “How much can a hundred extra calories really matter when we’re going to be dead by this time next week, anyway?”

“That’s the fucking spirit,” Richie agreed. A tentative smile crept across his face, much as he tried to resist it. Eddie seemed… wild. Feral. Like when they were kids at the rock war. There was a manic glint in his eyes. Like he was _alive_ , and remembered he was alive. Like he was so sure he was going to die and it was going to _hurt_ that he wasn’t afraid of anything anymore.

Their drinks arrived and Richie lifted up his whiskey, waiting as Eddie did the same with his Gee and Tee. Richie cocked his head at Eddie.

“Well? What are we drinking to?”

“To killing that fucking clown?” Eddie suggested.

“To Stan making good choices when we ambush him in six hours?”

The wrinkles in Eddie’s forehead smoothed out, and a flash of dimples were just barely visible as he fought back a smile. “To the Losers.”

Richie winked and clanked his shot glass against Eddie’s. “To the Losers.”

He alternated sipping between his whiskey and beer. The whiskey wasn’t good—at some point he’d actually learned what made a good whiskey, and like the taste of it, too—but the beer was beer, and it was something to do while he tried to keep his mind off the way they were about to blow up his childhood best friend’s life. At least he didn’t have an overwhelming sense of dread at the very thought. Just like, the normal amount of dread. That was probably a good sign.

There was a baseball game on the bar television—Cubbies, apparently. Richie instinctively rooted for them. People who cared about sports assured him it was their year. He’d believe it when he saw it, but he did love a good underdog story. Better if they never win, even. As he watched, he absentmindedly tapped his ring against his pint glass, something about the repetitive vibration soothing him. He didn’t even realize he was doing it until he glanced over at Eddie, and realized Eddie was staring hard at his left hand.

Right. Richie resisted the urge to hide it, to shove it in his pocket. He hadn’t worn it in seven years, but this time… Richie and Eddie together for one last ride. Richie couldn’t leave anything behind, if this was the end of the road. So he’d jammed the ring onto a finger that had apparently fattened up considerably over the years as he grabbed his go-bag and hailed a cab. He didn’t think too hard about how he’d worn it to be noticed. But he knew Eddie was going to see it, eventually. That was the whole _point_.

“You still have it?”

Richie couldn’t help but clench his fist, stroke his thumb over his ring.

“Yeah. Yeah: I still have it.”

Eddie nodded, turning back to his Gee and Tee. Richie’s eyes flickered down to Eddie’s finger—he couldn’t help it.

He wasn’t wearing his ring.

Richie buried his face in his beer and pretended like he hadn’t noticed, and hoped Eddie wouldn’t acknowledge that he noticed. Eddie took a long draught before he turned to face Richie, wobbly a little on the shitty airport stool.

“I left Myra.”

Richie blinked. Of everything, he hadn’t been expecting that. He wasn’t sure _why_ he hadn’t, but.

“Want a celebratory beej in the bathroom?” Richie asked, mouth in his pint glass.

Eddie snorted gin and tonic out of his nose.

* * *

The house had a fucking picket fence.

Eddie and Richie stood in front of it on the sidewalk, hands in their pockets. The lights were on inside, though curtains were mostly drawn. It was only eight-thirty—the Uris’s should still be up. Although, knowing Stan, maybe they were already puttering around getting ready for bed. Brushing their teeth, washing their faces. Richie’s gaze slid sideways to look at Eddie, who was staring up at the house with grim determination. Richie wouldn’t mind slipping into that kind of domesticity. Had always craved it, in fact. When you were a working stand-up the road was lonely, and impersonal, and had driven plenty of greater men than Richie to drink. He’d give a lot, to be in a home he shared with someone he loved, moving around each other as they tossed their clothes in the hamper, tugged on boxers and sleeping-shirts, let the dog out for the last time.

Eddie looked over at him and Richie ripped his gaze away, then looked back, because, fuck, uh?

“Ready?”

Richie took a breath.

Eddie nodded at him. “What’s your gut telling you?”

The question caught Richie off-guard, but it shouldn’t have. This whole plan had been based off his gut. Fifteen years ago, the feeling had reached up and grabbed him by the throat, telling him not to call Stan, telling him that a call to a Stan meant horror, meant blood and death and deep, unrelenting sorrow.

So he checked with that gut now. Thought through their plan step-by-step, turned it over in his mind and then swallowed it, shoving it down into his stomach.

It felt okay. It didn’t feel _bad_.

Richie looked up and nodded at Eddie. “I think we’ve got it. We just got to keep an eye on him.”

Eddie thrust his chin out in front of him. “Alright. Let’s fucking do it, then.” Without another word he strode forward, pushing his way through the Uris’ white picket gate on their white picket fence. Richie watched him go, just for a minute, lost in the moment of Eddie taking charge, Eddie striding ahead, bold and fearless in front of him. Then Richie shook his head and jogged to catch up with them.

“Hi, Mrs. Uris? We’re old friends of your husband’s. Is Stan in?”

Richie had to stifle a laugh at the sudden polite lilt of Eddie’s voice, the way he pitched it nearly an octave higher. It was so obviously his _work_ voice, and so different from the grumbly little growl he usually spoke to Richie in.

Mrs. Uris—Patty, apparently, according to Mike’s research—was a pretty woman. She looked like the sort Richie expected from Stan. Kind, put together, maybe gets a little tipsy on kosher wine and her hands get a little frisky with Stan on the drive home from a Seder dinner, or whatever holiday required a lot of drinking (most of them, right? All the good religious holidays did, gentile or Jew). She seemed a lot like Stan, actually.

She eyed them suspiciously, though was polite enough to try and hide it. “I can go get him. What did you say your names were?”

“Eddie Kaspbrak and Richie Tozier.”

Patty blinked and studied Richie, who was mostly hiding out behind Eddie—like that was fucking possible, ha.

“Aren’t… aren’t you a comedian?”

Richie smiled awkwardly at her. “So they keep writing on my checks!”

Patty nodded slowly, like she still didn’t believe him. When she left to get Stan she shut the door on them, which: fair.

“That didn’t even make sense,” Eddie hissed at Richie while they waited.

“I don’t know, I panicked! What would you have said?”

“‘Only when they pay me,’” Eddie replied smoothly.

“Shit, that _is_ better,” Richie muttered.

“And _you’re_ the fucking comedian,” Eddie grumbled.

“I don’t write own material.”

“I know; it’s fucking obvious.”

“Can I help you?”

Richie and Eddie’s heads whipped in unison at the voice. It was completely unfamiliar, yet its tone—that disappointed, almost _maternal_ tone—was unmistakable. Richie grinned so hard he forgot why they were here.

It was Stan. All grown up. He looked like a fucking dork: glasses perched on the end of his nose, curly hair flopping over his forehead, a cardigan—a _cardigan_ —and pleated pants. _Stan_.

“Stan. It’s Eddie. Eddie Kaspbrak. We were friends back in Derry. Remember?”

Richie raised one hand, other still shoved in his jacket pocket. “Richie Tozier. You were my best fucking friend from age seven to seventeen.”

“Hey,” Eddie whined.

“You couldn’t be my best friend when I wanted…” Richie shot him _eyes_. “You know.”

“You were _my_ best friend!”

“Look, one of us has a wife right now and one of us doesn’t, so do you want to start this?”

“That’s not fair.”

“That’s totally fair.”

“We didn’t _remember_ ; I’m talking about when we _remembered_.”

“Oh, fuck.”

Eddie and Richie’s heads both whipped around to look at Stan, who was staring at them with wide eyes behind his glasses. As Richie watch, Stan crossed his arms over his little cardigan and scowled at them. Richie grinned big. Oh, yeah. That was little Stanley Uris, all grown up.

“Stan?” Eddie asked, taking a step towards him.

“I remember you. I remember both of you.” Stan turned his attention to Richie specifically, causing Richie to take a half step back. “Richie. Richie. What… why are you here? You’re here. You’re going to get me in trouble, aren’t you? It never meant anything good; you were always getting me in trouble.”

Eddie took another cautious step forward even as Richie feigned hurt at Stan’s accusations. But he couldn’t help the grin that split his face. Stan! Urine! Was scared Richie was going to get him in trouble! Which, shit, okay, but the stupid clown shit wasn’t exactly Richie’s choice.

God, they had to live through this so Richie could drag Stan out to Vegas and make him party until he woke up in a fountain or tried to steal a tiger or something. Richie missed getting him into trouble so _much_.

“Hey, Stan. It’s Eddie. I’m here, too-”

Stan snorted as he turned to look at Eddie. “That’s not reassuring; you got into just as much shit as Richie did. You just complained about it the whole time.”

“ _Hey_!” Now it was Eddie’s turn to look offended. Richie giggled a little hysterically, but it was just because he was so full of how much he _missed_ this. How much he missed Stan, and not just Stan. How much he missed the Losers, being together. Missed it being more than just him and Eddie, or even him and Eddie and Mike, though when it was the three of them the magic of the old days started to build up. Now there were four of them. Or there would be, so long as Richie and Eddie could get Stan to Derry safely.

“Come on, Stan,” Richie told him. He stepped forward so he was level with Eddie. “You got something hard to drink? Because you’re going to need it.”

Stan glared at him. “I knew it.”

* * *

The glass of bourbon shook in Stan’s hand as he lifted it to take another sip. Richie had taken the glass Stan offered him in solidarity but hadn’t done much more than sip at it. It was good bourbon—he’d have to finish the glass, just because it was that good. But he didn’t have any plans on getting drunk. Not tonight, when he still wasn’t sure what Stan was going to do or how he was going to stop it.

“I’m not going back.”

“We have to go back together,” Eddie explained. “If we’re not all there, It’ll win.”

“If I go back, I’m going to get us all killed,” Stan told them. “I can’t- I can’t go into that house, I won’t, I-”

“Hey, hey.” Richie reached across the table with his left hand, clasping it over Stan’s. Their dual wedding rings glinted in the warm light of Stan’s library. Richie could feel Eddie’s eyes on him, but he pushed it to the back of his mind for now. Time enough for that later. “What the hell are you talking about? You’re Stan the Man.”

“I’m Stanley Urine,” Stan shot back.

“Bullshit. You came into that house with us when we were thirteen. You can do it again.”

“I could do it when I was thirteen because thirteen-year-olds aren’t afraid of anything!” Stan replied. “Thirteen-year-olds are fucking stupid; they think they’ll live forever and nothing can hurt them! I… I’ve got a mortgage, I’ve got a wife, I can’t-”

Eddie looked around. “This place isn’t paid off?”

“It’s a thirty-year fixed, I don’t-” Stan shook his head. “That’s not the point.”

“Stan.” Richie shook Stan’s hand lightly beneath his own. Stan met his eyes, and Richie had to suppress a shudder. He didn’t like what he saw in them. The raw fear. It wasn’t just the fear—Richie was afraid, Eddie was afraid. You’d be an idiot to not be absolutely shitting-your-pants terrified at what they were all knowingly walking into. But there was something more than just bone-deep fear in Stan’s eyes. There was… desperation. Like an animal with a foot caught in a trap. One that would do anything to get itself free—including chew off its own leg.

“I’ll get us all killed,” Stan told him. “I can’t go in that house. Not again.”

“You can do this,” Richie told him. “You did this at thirteen. You climbed down a fucking ancient well in an abandoned monster house and beat the shit out of a demon clown. You can do this.”

“Can you come with us to the airport tomorrow?” Eddie asked him. “We’ve got three tickets to Derry. What if you just took us to the airport?”

“And then what if I just got on the plane?” Stan asked. “And then what if I just met the old gang for dinner? And then what if I just-”

“One step at a time,” Eddie told him. “One hour at a time, if it needs to be. Can you make it through this minute? How about this one?”

“But then one of those minutes I won’t make it through,” Stan insisted, eyes wet. “You’re asking if I can go to the airport, if I can get on the plane. But then it’s going to be ‘Can you step foot on the porch,’ and I won’t fucking be able to. I’m going to… It’s going to break the… the circle.”

“Hey.” Richie tugged at Stan’s hand so he could hold it between both of his. He rubbed at it, smiling faintly. “If it comes to it, me and Mike will just fucking carry you inside ourselves. You can’t fail even if you want to, man. Not with the Losers at your back.”

“I also have a shit-ton of Xanax,” Eddie offered. Richie groaned and held out his hands, like, _dude_. They were having a _moment_. Eddie shrugged unapologetically. “What: you think I’m not taking a fucking Xanax before I step foot on that porch? Fuck you. You can’t fucking stop me.”

Richie started giggling, and then chuckling, and then he was laying his head down on the Uris’ dining table and laughing until he cried, because: _Eddie_. What the _fuck_?!

“Did you take a fucking Xanax today? On the plane?”

Eddie looked at him like he was fucking stupid or something, and Richie loved it.

“What? No. Commercial airlines are one of the safest forms of transportation-”

“Oh my fucking Gee-dash-Dee, I cannot fucking believe you, you fucking insurance adjuster.”

“I’m _not_ -” Eddie’s hand snapped up to rub his forehead. “Look, can we just-” he gestured at Stan.

But Stan was almost smiling at them, gaze slowly moving from one of them to the other. He shook his head.

“You guys are exactly the same. How are you guys exactly the same?”

Richie grabbed his hand and patted it. “Hey, Stan: I got good fucking news for you. You’re exactly the fucking same, too. Which means I know you’re gonna be able to walk into Neibolt. Because you did it twenty-seven years ago. And you’re that same scrawny little Jew I loved back then.”

“Jesus, Richie,” Eddie swore.

But Stan was almost smiling. And that was enough, for now.

* * *

Stan showed them to the guest room, hovering in the hallway outside the bedroom door. “We’ve just got the one guest room, but we’ve got an air mattress; I can set one of you up in my office, or on the couch in the living room…”

Richie and Eddie both stuck their heads in the room and took in the queen-sized mattress. They glanced at each other.

“Don’t worry about it,” Richie told him. He saw Eddie relax out of the corner of his eye and resisted the urge to glance back over at him. “We can share. More room than the hammock, right?”

That tugged something like a smile out of Stan, his eyes unfocused as he remembered.

“That’s right, that hammock… you two were constantly fighting over it…”

Richie snorted, thumb twirling at his wedding ring subconsciously. “Yeah, _that’s_ what were doing in it…”

“We were _thirteen_ ,” Eddie told him with a glare.

Stan didn’t seem to know what to make of this, so he just nodded. “I’ll… okay. There’s an en suite in there. Holler if you need anything?”

“You too,” Eddie told him. His hand darted out to grab Stan’s arm, holding him in place even as he turned to head off. Stan waited, scanning Eddie’s face nervously. “Seriously. We’re here. We’re here _with you_ , Stan. You wake up at three am and you need someone, we’re here.”

“I’ve got a wife for that,” Stan pointed out, though his tone that tried to be gently teasing fell awkwardly flat.

Well, it just so happened “awkwardly flat” was Richie’s middle name. He stepped on and clasped Stan on the shoulder, shaking him roughly. Eddie let go as he let Richie room to work his magic.

“Yeah, but if you wake up screaming about clowns, maybe you can’t explain to the missus why exactly that’s so fucking scary, and it’s more than just that season of _American Horror Story_ really fucking you up, right?”

“Right…” Stan replied. His gaze flickered uncertainly between Eddie and Richie.

“We’re right here,” Eddie reminded him.

“So keep it down with the missus,” Richie joked. But then he met Stan’s eyes and held them.

Stan nodded. After too long, Richie let go. Stan had gotten the message. Now the only question was if it would be enough? Richie’s gut wasn’t talking to him—yes or no, which he was choosing to take as a positive. The only time it had ever spoken up so far was to tell him _not_ to let Mike call Stan back over the phone. It hadn’t made a peep since, so Richie figured all this must be okay. He had a feeling Eddie would have a glass-is-half-empty read on the situation, but it was _his_ feeling, so _he_ got to interpret it however optimistically he wanted to.

Then Stan looked at Richie and something sparked in his eyes. Before Richie could remember what it was—he knew that look, he _knew_ what Stan was about to do, but he’d just _forgotten_ , it had been so long—Stan smirked and said:

“Well, okay. As long as me and Patty don’t have to listen to you two screaming at each other all night.”

Richie’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropping open in joyful expectation of the opportunity to make the dirtiest jokes- and immediately got the wind knocked out of him via an elbow to his stomach. Richie groaned and clutched at his stomach as Eddie stepped bodily between him and Stan, shoving Richie back into the room as he did so.

“Let us know if you need anything,” Eddie told him.

Stan frowned. “Shouldn’t I be saying that to you two?”

But Eddie was right, of course. Richie wheezed in a breath or two, then leaned over Eddie’s shoulder to make eye-contact with Stan.

“No: we’re telling you, Stan the man. Whatever you need. We’re right here. Come and get us. Losers stick together, right?”

Stan looked between them, lips pressed in a thin line.

God, Stan, please. _Please_.

“Losers stick together,” Stan replied, voice trembling.

On impulse Richie pushed past Eddie and grabbed Stan into a too-tight bear hug. He guessed he owed Mike an apology for giving him shit about them all these years—sometimes, you just had to hug your fellow Losers like your life depended on it. Because it very well might.

“I love you, Stan,” Richie told him. “You’re my best fucking friend.”

“We haven’t seen each other in twenty-seven years,” Stan pointed out. But he was hugging back, hard.

“So we’ve got decades of best friend bullshit to catch up on,” Richie said. “Start making a list. Top of it needs to be a Vegas bachelor party. On me.”

“That sounds fucking terrible,” Stan observed. But when they pulled apart Stan was smiling, albeit a little wobbly. But that was okay. That was good enough, for now. It had to be.

Eddie and Richie looked at each other when Stan’s footsteps retreated down the hall. They ducked into the guest room, shutting the door firmly behind them. Richie leaned against it, breathing a long, worried sigh as Eddie started pacing around the room.

“Do you think he’s going to be alright?” Eddie asked.

“I don’t fucking know,” Richie grumbled. “Do you think we should… do something?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, like… sleeping in shifts, making sure he doesn’t get up in the middle of the night and take a swan dive off his roof.”

“What if he gets up and takes pills in his medicine cabinet, asshole?” Eddie pointed out. “We’d never fucking know. What if he slits his wrists in his bathroom? What if he takes a bath with a hairdryer?”

“Why are all these scenarios happening in his bathroom?” Richie whined, mostly to disguise the very real fear he felt at the thought of all the terrible things Stan could do tonight, with Eddie and Richie none the wiser.

“Most household accidents occur in the bathroom,” Eddie explained. “And because the master bedroom has an attached bathroom where Stan could sneak off and do whatever the fuck he wants in the middle of the night. Drink bleach, swallow glass, hang himself with the shower hose-”

“Jesus, Eds-!”

“I’m just saying!” Eddie explained, voice rising in panic. “There’s a lot of things that can kill you in a bathroom that’s why they’re so dangerous!”

“Fuck, fuck, okay, shut up, let me think.” Richie walked over to the bed and sat down, pulling off his glasses so he could put his face in his hands. Okay. He breathed.

After a minute the bed depressed next to him. There were no springs to squeak—it felt like a memory foam mattress. Very nice, Uris’s: shelling out for the good shit even in the guest room.

Eddie’s hand slipped into his. Richie breathed.

“We could sleep in shifts,” Eddie offered.

“You said why that wouldn’t work.”

Eddie shrugged. “Still. We could listen.”

“We have his number, now,” Richie thought out loud. Eddie’s thumb stroked over his knuckles. “We could just… text him. During the night. Remind him that we’re here.”

“We could remind him what he’s fighting for.”

Richie lifted his head to look over at Eddie. This close he didn’t need his glasses to make out Eddie’s face—even if it was a little soft on the details. That was okay, though. Richie didn’t need to see every mole and freckle in high-def, because he already had them all memorized. He’d spent his life studying that face.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “That… that might work.”

Eddie kissed him then, and Richie had been waiting for it. He lifted his hand to cup Eddie’s cheek, kissing, licking, sucking at each other’s mouths in an unhurried rhythm. They’d showered at the hotel where they’d dropped their shit for the night—not planning on depending on the hospitality of the Uris’s for their overnight accommodations. That was the only way Richie knew he had a chance of getting any action now—no way Eddie would fuck him after a day of traveling through airports and on planes without scrubbing all the germs off both of them first.

Richie reached forward to grab a fistful of Eddie’s shirt, tugging him onto Richie’s chest as he laid down on the bed.

“We’re not fucking in our friend’s guest bedroom,” Eddie mumbled into Richie’s mouth. But he’d moved to straddle Richie’s hips, and kept kissing him, hands coming up to frame Richie’s face. Richie lifted his hips _just_ gently up, a smooth roll, not too insistent, not hurried, just like, _heyyy, Eddie. This is down here, remember_?

Yeah, Eddie’s dick was getting hard in his slacks. Richie smirked into their next kiss.

“I can be quiet,” Richie promised. “You can make me be quiet. I can just…” he reached for Eddie’s belt, whining softly when Eddie reached down to grab his wrist. He glanced up at Eddie and waggled his eyebrows, then very, very pointedly licked his lips.

“You can keep me quiet, Eds,” Richie whispered.

Eddie glared down at him, fuming silently. But Richie had already won: he could see it in Eddie’s eyes. After all these years, there was nothing Eddie could hide from him. Even when Richie wished he could.

“We don’t have any stuff,” Eddie pointed out. But he was pulling back from Richie, stripping off his shirt. After a moment he swung his legs off Richie’s hips and started shimmying out of his pants. Richie scrambled to catch up.

“Get the door,” Eddie told him. Richie was up and locking the door before it even occurred to him to whine about Eddie ordering him around. Not that it would have been a believable complaint in the slightest.

They both knew who wore the fucking pants. And unfortunately those pants had a thirty inch inseam.

Richie turned back to the bed and stopped, staring. Eddie was sprawled out on top of the covers, dick in hand, stroking it lightly, naked as Richie’s dick was hard.

His pubic hair was still too neatly trimmed. Richie wondered if he could get him to grow it out again, now that he’d left Myra. He’d never told Eddie that he liked it better wild. Maybe… maybe now… maybe they had _time_ …

“Get your pants off,” Eddie told him with a scowl.

Richie tripped out of his pants and fell onto the bed in his eagerness to kiss every inch of that scowl, feel it against his lips, swallow it with his tongue. He wanted to get married to this man (again) and take wedding photos where Eddie was glaring at him. He wanted to send out engagement photos where Eddie was frowning while Richie cut a rug. He wanted to be frowned at for the rest of his life, just like that.

“We don’t have any stuff…” Richie reminded him with a smile. He started to crawl up the bed to kiss Eddie stupid again, but Eddie stopped him when he was right around dick-level. Richie shrugged and started to get ready to suck some dick. Not like that was a _burden_ …

But then Eddie was whistling and twirling his finger. “Flip around, come on. We can sixty-nine.”

Richie missed the next place his arm was supposed to go and he ended up slipping on the duvet covert, faceplanting flat on the mattress.

“Wh-a-?”

“No mess, no clean-up. Just make sure you swallow.”

Richie sat back on his ass, staring at Eddie.

“Are… are _you_ -”

Eddie’s cheeks were pink but he kept frowning at Richie like if he acted nonchalant about this it wouldn’t be a big deal.

“Yeah, come on. I don’t want to get cum on Stan’s sheets, Richie. It just makes sense.”

Richie groaned and his dick twitched, heavy and eager between his legs. _Seriously_? Eddie was just going to come out hitting all Richie’s kinks at once like that?

“Hurry up or we won’t do anything,” Eddie ordered him. God, he couldn’t be any hotter if he _tried_.

As coordinated as he could Richie spun himself around on the bed, dropping his feet up at the headboard—Eddie quickly moved the pillows so Richie didn’t sully them with his toe-lint—and his face directly level with Eddie’s dick. Eddie’s beautiful, weeping, pink dick. Richie loved it so much he could cry. He loved it so much that he _did_ drop a kiss to the shaft, reverently, because he loved this dick. And the dick it was attached to.

“You’re so considerate of the Uris’ linens,” Richie joked. He licked a stripe up Eddie’s shaft, mouth watering. Down between his legs he heard Eddie spit into his palm, then his slick hand was jerking Richie’s dick to hardness.

“You’re about to get your dick sucked, are you really complaining?”

Richie hummed, nosing at Eddie’s pubes (he could get him to grow them out again, he knew he could), pressing sloppy wet kisses up and down the shaft. “No, because I’m about to get to suck some dick,” Richie agreed.

And then Eddie was sucking him down without another word, catching Richie by surprise and causing him to jerk against Eddie’s face impolitely. He swore and murmured an apology into Eddie’s dick. Then he sucked it down, lovingly laving his tongue along the underside. Eddie moaned around Richie’s dick, which made Richie moan around his, and it was a fucking closed-circuit of increased horniness, fuck, this was nice.

Richie performed some of his best deep-throating work, but it was hard to concentrate when Eddie was between his legs putting _his_ best effort in to making Richie come. Eddie pulled off for a second, and Richie was too busy concentrating on swallowing around his dick without gagging to register exactly what he was doing. Then a wet finger slipped down behind his balls, pressing back, and Richie groaned as it rubbed against his taint. He pulled off and gasped, catching his breath.

“Fuck, Eddie.”

Eddie sucked him backed down and hummed like the little jerkwad he was. But he was also applying firm, pulsing pressure to Richie’s taint, giving him an external prostate massage, and it was driving Richie a little bit crazy. In response he ducked his head and licked Eddie’s balls into his mouth, sucking on them just the right side of too-hard, like Eddie liked it. He felt Eddie gag around his dick in excitement, and then he was spluttering, pulling off to catch his breath.

“Richie, shit, take it easy.”

Richie sucked harder, pulling away from Eddie’s body and taking the balls with him, stretching them out _just_ tight enough. Eddie moaned brokenly, forehead dropping against Richie’s thighs.

“Holy _fuck_.”

Richie let Eddie’s balls fall from his mouth with a heavy _plop_ , causing Eddie’s hips to jerk again. His dick was leaking hard, neglected up against his stomach. Richie took pity on it and sucked it down again, growling, nuzzling his nose back and forth in his manicured pubes.

Not to be outdone—except he was absolutely getting outdone, Richie was a _master_ cocksucker and poor Eddie simply didn’t have the opportunity to practice like Richie had—Eddie took Richie into his mouth again, rubbing steady pressure into his taint. Then he reached up with his other hand and tugged at Richie’s hips, encouraging him forward. Richie took the hint happily, fucking his hips into Eddie’s face as well as he could lying on his side. Eddie’s hips started to move in response, and soon they were both face-fucking each other.

Richie moaned, eyelashes fluttering with every sharp thrust of Eddie’s cock down his throat. He was drooling all over the place, messing up Eddie’s tidy pubes. Richie reached down and grabbed at Eddie’s balls, still wet with his spit, and started squeezing them on every thrust. Abruptly Eddie dropped Richie’s dick from his mouth, coughing hard.

“Ungh, fuck, Richie, yes-”

Richie rubbed his tongue over and over the head of Eddie’s dick with every thrust, squeezing his balls between his fingers. Eddie came with a low groan, pulsing down Richie’s throat. Richie swallowed, feeling his own neglected dick twitch in sympathy. A gob of precome burst out of the tip and dribbled down the side. Richie’s hips thrust at Eddie’s face and he moaned sadly.

“Alright, alright,” Eddie soothed him as he slipped his softening dick from Richie’s mouth. He shoved at Richie, pushing him onto his back. “Go on.” Then he enveloped Richie’s dick, fingers returning to press at his taint.

Richie moaned, probably too loudly so he bit his lip in an attempt at propriety. His fingers reached down to tangle in Eddie’s hair as his hips started to thrust up: slow at first, then faster as Eddie’s jaw relaxed and they found their rhythm again.

Richie made the mistake of glancing down, and he was fucking done for. Eddie’s baleful doe eyes were staring up at him from between his legs, perfect and beautiful and like he was fucking made to be there. His lips were red and spit-slick, wrapped tight like they were straining with the effort to fully envelop Richie’s thick dick. And that pressure on Richie’s prostate from the outside, like a.. a fucking… a fun button, like he was being massaged to orgasm, like…

He actually managed to keep quiet, huffing as he spilled himself down Eddie’s throat. It was kind of thrilling, not having to give Eddie a warning for once (though it wasn’t the first time Eddie had swallowed: his disdain for mess overrode any gross-out factor that might come with swallowing Richie’s cum).

Richie rolled over and stared at Eddie as he padded off to the bathroom, presumably to rinse his mouth out (no toothbrush! What was Eddie ever going to _do_?!). The faucet went for a minute, and then Richie heard Eddie peeing briefly in the toilet. Eddie was back shortly after that, wiping his hands off on his sweats. Richie studied him, watching the way his hair was mused and falling into his eyes, now; the kiss-swollen redness of his lips, the olive-tinged flush to his skin. Much more handsome than Richie’s face, that just got red and blotchy, he knew. Everything about Eddie was better than Richie, of course. Even the nasty, bitter parts. Even his faults.

As Eddie made his way around the side of the bed, Richie propped himself up on his elbow and said: “I love you.”

Eddie blinked like he hadn’t been expecting it, which: why would he? They’d just engaged in vaguely antagonistic sixty-nineing: not exactly a tender lovemaking of whispered endearments (though, with them, “vaguely antagonistic” might just be their love language. It was the only one Eddie seemed capable of speaking, at least, and Richie had become fluent in it years and years ago). Then Eddie _glanced behind him_ , like he wasn’t even sure if Richie was talking to _him_. Richie rolled onto his back and started laughing, because, _fuck_ , what else were you supposed to do to that?

The bed dipped as Eddie catapulted himself onto it, smacking lightly at Richie’s shoulder. “Well! What the fuck, man? You can’t just… Drop that on a guy! What am I supposed to do?”

Smiling, Richie rolled back onto his side facing Eddie. He shrugged. “Nothing. It’s not for you to _do_ something about. I just. I love you. I can’t fucking help it. You can’t fucking help it. That’s just the way it is. It’s just a fucking fact.”

Completely deadpan, Eddie said: “No, stop. You’re making me cry.”

But his eyes _were_ a little wet, a little desperate. They were wide, like he _did_ have to _do_ something about this: he just hadn’t figured out _what_ yet.

Leaning forward, Richie pressed a kiss to Eddie’s lips, and that at least Eddie knew how to respond to, kissing Richie back perfunctorily. Richie tugged the covers up and rolled over, back to Eddie.

“Night.”

Beside him, Eddie was still for a long, long moment. When he finally said “Night,” back, Richie was halfway to sleep.

* * *

They woke up at intervals throughout the night, reaching for their phones, ears straining, breaths quiet.

_remember how u said ‘fuck’ at ur bar mitzvah? and ur dad was the fucking rabbi? holy shit, dude, that was amazing_

_You beat the shit out of that clown, with the rest of us._

Stan had read receipts on, and they could see he was reading the texts.

_when me and bill and eddie went into that fucking house and eddie broke his arm u ran in w the rest of them to save us. ur just as brave as everyone. braver_

_Patty’s beautiful_.

_this house fucking rules dude_

Three am, and the texts were still getting read.

_Mike can’t wait to see you. He sent us to get you because he was so excited to see you again._

_u know Ben’s hot now? u gotta see him w us. i've been working on material for like a year in anticipation of this_

_Bev has a whole fashion line. Bill writes terrible books. Richie and I read some on the plane—Black Rapids? Attic Room? Stan: they’re SO bad._

_do u still birdwatch? are the birds in atlanta better?_

_Mike’s a librarian now. Cardigans and everything._

_u gotta let me write you into my act. birdwatching little jew boy, come on, there’s gotta be some material there._

_Remember when you and me snuck off to listen to the gospel choirs on Sunday mornings? And how the old black grandmas would catch us and let us sneak in and snack on potluck while they practiced?_

At five am Richie’s phone buzzed and he fumbled for it, grabbing his glasses in his left hand, phone in his right. He didn’t even put his glasses on, just held them up to his fucking face in his panic to read the text. He was sure it was going to be from Patty, a panicked scramble: she’d found him, he wasn’t breathing, his wrists were slit, his pill bottles were empty, he was missing, he was found-

_I need a long story now. Who’s the missus?_

Richie sagged in relief. Next to him, Eddie stirred, squinting in the light of his phone. He started to lever himself up, breath coming fast. “Is it-”

“It’s okay.” Richie pressed his left hand, the hand still holding his glasses, to Eddie’s stomach over the sheets. “He’s just talking. Go back to sleep.”

“I can sleep on the plane-” Eddie mumbled, but he was already sinking back down into the mattress.

“You can sleep now, too.”

In a minute Eddie’s breathing had evened back out. Richie lifted his glasses to his face, jamming them on properly now. Eddie’s mouth was open, head turned away from him. Richie smiled tightly, unable to suppress his love for this messy, terrible man, in moments like these. He sighed and turned back to his phone.

Right. Not exactly a distraction from those thoughts.

_its kinda secret_

_Is it someone famous?_

_lololol_

_?_

_no. not some1 famous_

_???_

Richie sighed and tapped his thumb against the side of his phone case. Stan was asking for a distraction and Richie wanted to give one to him. It was an hour to dawn: if Richie could get him through to the sun coming up, Richie knew he would have Stan for at least another day. They’d get him to Derry. And then they’d have four other Losers to keep an eye out on him.

_ok but you gotta promise to keep your mouth shut, urine_

_Okay, Richie. I pinkie promise not to tell anyone who your wife is._

Richie bit at his thumbnail. Shit, was this actually a good idea? What if Stan was a homophobe? He was currently lying in bed next to his husband in Stan’s house. And they were both naked. Or… Richie lifted the covers and noted Eddie was sleeping in yesterday’s boxer-briefs. Okay: mostly naked. What if Stan rushed in and kicked them out of his house? Screamed at them? Or, worse: what if Stan refused to go to Derry with a couple of dirty faggots?

Shit, _shit_. He hadn’t thought this through.

_its kind of bad_

Richie winced as soon as he sent the text. He… He didn’t mean… _bad_ , but…

_???_

Richie chewed at his lip.

_Richie?_

…

_She’s not underage, right?_

_Your sister?_

_Your cousin?_

Richie snorted.

_no, and no and no, were not related_

_…Well…?_

If this fucked up Stan coming to Derry with them, it’d be the worst thing Richie had ever done. Way worse than convincing Eddie to cheat on his wife (not that he ever needed much convincing, the selfish little shit) or abandoning Mike, and to a lesser degree Eddie, for four years. But Stan asked the question, Stan wanted to talk, and Richie knew if he tried to avoid the topic Stan would think the problem was with _him_. That’s how these things felt at five o’clock in the morning. Especially when your mind was delving those deep, dark places Stan’s surely was.

Start slow. That was probably the wisest course of action. See what he thought about one piece at a time before laying it all on him.

There was only one place to start, though. Richie breathe out of his teeth.

_its actually not a woman_

The seconds before the “…” appeared on the message screen were the longest of Richie’s life. Except that record was immediately surpassed by the seconds those ellipses stayed on the screen as Stan typed… whatever he was going to type. Richie breathed hard and held the phone

_Well that’s not that complicated._

_I was expecting something way weirder. Like you were in a throuple with the Olsen twins._

_how do u even no the word throuple_

_I’m the same age as you_

_no ur not u were 40 when we were 13 that makes u like 100 now_

_It would make me 67 now_

_no its called exponential growth read a book smtime, STAN_

_Is that it? You’ve got a husband? Mazel tov._

Richie snorted. If only it was that easy.

_I don’t give a shit, you know. It’s 2016._

_shoulda clocked u 2 as suburban liberals. but u DO live in GA_

_Georgia’s politics are actually turning bluer every year. Thanks to gerrymandering and decades of segregation the black vote is systematically suppressed; if it weren’t for that it would be a swing state_

_there needs 2 b a jerking off emoji_

_Luckily they have this: [middle finger emoji]_

Richie snorted, glow of his phone illuminating his face in the pre-dawn darkness. Stan got off a good one. He breathed. Maybe it was going to be okay. Maybe Stan was going to get through this just fine.

_So who’s the lucky gentleman? Someone famous? Someone I’d know?_

Richie groaned at the dual question. No, but yes. Which narrowed it down a lot. He sighed and looked over at Eddie snoozing beside him. Was it his secret to tell? Should he consult with Eddie first?

Then Richie’s gaze fell to Eddie’s left hand. His wedding band from his marriage to Myra was gone. He said he’d served her with divorce papers. Probably one of those subconscious planning things that happened sometime during these intervals. He’d set it all up, done the research, had the contact ready. Then Mike’s call had come in and the sleeper cell had been activated, and Eddie had been able to get the papers and serve Myra before he left.

But he wasn’t wearing _their_ wedding ring, either.

Maybe Eddie wanted to be single, after all of this. Maybe he wanted to be his own man, figure out what that meant for him. He’d never had the chance: in the outside world, he’d gone from living with his mother to living with his wife with hardly a month off in between. In Derry he and Richie had gotten together immediately—thanks to Eddie’s over-eagerness, but all the same. Maybe now that Eddie was free from his legal marriage, and Richie had no formal claim to him, Eddie would want to go off. Sow his wild oats. Breathe his own air, without someone else there clinging to him.

They hadn’t talked about it. So Richie couldn’t make that choice for him.

Richie sighed and tapped out: _complicated. going thru some things. ask me again after…_

Richie growled and deleted that last part. It wasn’t dawn yet.

_were gonna talk soon. ask me again next week_

_Uh-oh. Someone in the dog house?_

Richie glanced over at the man snoring unattractively beside him. A wave of affection crashed over him, as strong as he’d ever felt in his life. He would do anything for this man. Even if what Eddie wanted him to do was fuck off while he Ate Prayed Loved his way through his midlife crisis.

_nah. at least, hes still putting out_

_beep beep, Richie_

Richie beamed down at his phone and cupped it in his palms like it was something precious. Which it was, by proxy. In the next few minutes, when Stan didn’t reply again, Richie found himself dozing off. But he felt safe doing it, knowing that Stan was going to make it to morning. Call it an intuition.

* * *

Richie was clinging to Eddie, even as Eddie paced around the Jade of the Orient parking lot.

“What the _fuck_ was that?!” Eddie shouted, hand rubbing creases into his forehead. Richie kept pace with him (not like it was hard), sometimes one hand hovering over the small of his back, sometimes touching at his elbow. Stan was standing stock-still just outside the group huddle, arms wrapped around himself, staring at nothing. That wasn’t good. But Richie was erstwhile occupied.

“Yeah Mike what the _fuck_ , that shit’s _never_ happened before!”

“It wasn’t awake before,” Mike explained. “We knew It was going to-”

“ _You_ knew!” Ben pointed out. “You three, apparently! We didn’t know any of this!”

Bill was grabbing at his hair as he walked in circles, thinking. Bev was starting what was sure to be an epic fit of chain smoking. Richie wanted to bum one off her, but he wanted to stay next to Eddie more. The fucking… the _things_ had tried to attack Eddie. Tried to attack Richie too, but who gave a shit about _that_?

“We didn’t know this shit!” Eddie shouted, voice going high. “I just thought, I thought… we go in to the sewers and, and… kill It there! I didn’t think It was going to… attack us in a Chinese restaurant!”

“That’s w-w-what It used to do, though,” Bill pointed out. He had stopped circling for a moment to instead meet the eyes of each member of the group, like the perfect leader he was. Richie couldn’t even resent him for it, because he knew it was just Bill’s genuine self. “It would s-s-scare us up here, right? Attack us.”

“We need to show them what you’ve figured out,” Richie told Mike. Eddie had stopped pacing and Richie’s hand had subconsciously settled on the small of his back. He wondered if they were being obvious. Stan seemed too far gone to come to any sort of revelations, which wasn’t as reassuring as it could have been.

Eddie was rubbing at his forehead again. “Yeah. Yeah, Mike: show them what you’ve got. One of them has got to have a better idea than we came up with, right?”

“Haven’t you guys been working on this for like, fifteen years?” Ben asked.

Richie and Eddie glanced at each other. Well…

“W-w-we’ll take a l-l-look,” Bill said. His eyes locked with Mike’s and he nodded. “Sh-sh-show us what you’ve g-g-g-got.”

* * *

Stan was still sitting, listless, in a corner. Richie dragged Eddie into the kitchen with him to get drinks and snacks for the Losers as they crowded into Mike’s sadly cramped home, made even worse by the whole of Mike’s decades of research pulled out and occupying every spare space in the living room. Richie scrambled around the cupboards, looking for teabags.

“What kind of tea is the calming shit?” he asked Eddie, finding three boxes of different color teas. “I’ve got… green, English breakfast… oh, this one says ‘Sleepy Time.’ That’s got to be calming, right?”

“Put some honey in it,” Eddie offered, passing him a honey bear from fuck knows where.

“Why? Will that help Stan calm down?”

Eddie shot him a look over his shoulder. “No. It just tastes good, moron.”

“Well _fuck_ me,” Richie grumbled, but it was in good humor.

The Losers had just accepted that Richie and Eddie accidentally made their way back to Derry over the years and had been helping Mike on and off with his research. No one asked why they hadn’t been brought into the loop, though Bev’s eyes said she would ask, one day. Richie didn’t have an answer for her, other than “once we realized what was happening, it was just a year and a half ago, and we weren’t sure…” Which was no answer at all.

Richie shoved the warm mug into Stan’s hands, startling the first real reaction out of Stan since the horrors at the restaurant. Stan’s head jerked back, eyes snapping out of the middle-distance to refocus on Richie’s face, not three feet in front of him.

“Drink that,” Richie told him. “It’s got honey in it.”

Stan frowned down at the tea, puzzling over what Richie thought was a very helpful factoid.

“Is it drugged?”

“What?! No! Give me that.” Richie grabbed the tea out of Stan’s hands and took a big swallow of it. Then immediately regretted it because the inside of his mouth basically burned off in one piece. He swallowed too quickly and shove the mug back at Stan.

“Fuck, _Fuck-_!” Richie flapped his hands at his mouth, sucking air in like that could help heal the second degree burns he must have just given his fucking tongue and soft palette. “Fucking great, guess I won’t be giving any hummers the next two weeks.”

Stan was looking up at Richie in something like faint awe. Or maybe it was incredulity. The two were hard to separate, sometimes. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You thought I was! Poisoning you!”

“Drugging.”

“Still! I’m fucking not, dude. I mean, it’s ‘Sleepy Time’ tea, whatever the fuck that means-”

“It’s decaf,” Stan told him.

“Well: there you go. And there’s honey in it.” Richie hissed again, sucking another pull of cool air into his mouth. “ _Fuck_.”

They settled around in a loose circle with Mike at the center, standing in front of the TV like he was about to give a lecture to worse troublemakers than the Breakfast Club. Richie scooted over to stand next to Eddie on his left, shoulders bumping in solidarity. Eddie nodded over at Stan, probably not as subtly as he thought he was being. Richie just shrugged. What was there to report, at this point?

Mike gave his speech. The Losers asked their questions, but for Eddie and Richie it was almost all old ground being retread. Richie was half-sitting against one of Mike’s over-stuffed bookcases when the conversation finally turned to new territory.

“And what was that the Shock- sorry, say it again?” Bev asked.

“The Shokopiwah,” Mike repeated.

“Right. What was it they said? About living things and… rules?”

“All living things must abide by the law of the shape they inhabit,” Mike recited dutifully. “That’s why we know there’s laws that govern It. There have to be.”

“But, wait,” Stan said, pushing his glasses up with thumb and index finger spread the width of his face. Richie took a moment to admire how much cooler that looked than just jamming his middle finger up the bridge of his nose. Damn it, Stan: why did you have to be outdoing him at his _thing_? “What if… Is that _all_ that means?”

“Why?” Ben asked. “What did you think it meant?”

“Well, for instance: if It turns into a werewolf, we could kill him with silver bullets? Or if It turns into a vampire, we could kill him with a stake through the heart?”

Mike stared at Stan, open-mouthed. Then that mouth split into a grin and he gestured wildly at him. “I never thought of that! That… That could be something, Stan.”

Richie nodded over at Stan. “Shit, imagine if you’d had this guy with you for the last fifteen years instead dumb and dumber.”

Eddie lifted his head. “Hey! Speak for yourself!”

“Don’t worry: you’re dumb, I’m dumber.”

“I’m supposed to just be okay with that?”

But Bill was watching Stan and Mike with an intense, nearly fanatic light in his eyes. “And It takes the f-f-form of anything w-w-we’re afraid of.”

Mike nodded at him. But before he could jump on that, Richie snapped his fingers.

“It’s fucking Ghostbuster rules.”

Bill, Mike, and Stan turned to frown at him. But Eddie groaned and held his head in his hands, and Richie knew he got it. Eds was always on the same page as him, even if he didn’t want to be.

“Fucking Ghostbuster rules, man. Keep your minds blank. And if you can’t, think of the thing that couldn’t possibly be deadly.”

“Stay Puft marshmallow man,” Eddie sighed. He looked up at Richie with a face of grim resignation. “So we’ve gotta all agree on a form for It and plan on how to kill that form.”

Richie spread his hands out triumphantly. “Bingo! Right? So we all picture a vampire, and _floop_ , it turns into James Marsters, and then we’re packed to the gills with wooden stakes, maybe Bev flirts with him a little bit, maybe Ben does, then one two, stabby mc-goo, and we’re done!”

“Maybe we should pick something that’s not a super strong immortal killing machine,” Eddie pointed out.

“It was just an example,” Richie sniped.

“But when he was a clown, stabbing him didn’t kill him,” Bev pointed out. “We hit him and stabbed him and… did all _sorts_ of things to him, and he didn’t die.”

“Maybe because he wasn’t just _a_ clown,” Mike speculated. “He was Pennywise.”

“Demon-clown,” Richie grumbled.

“Then let’s all imagine he’s a cockroach or something,” Ben suggested.

“Are you kidding me?” Richie snorted. “We’re trying to make him _easier_ to kill, not harder.”

“And doesn’t it have to be something scary?” Stan pointed out. “He only takes the form of things we’re afraid of.”

“I’m afraid of cockroaches,” Eddie pointed out, hand raised.

“What about a rat?” Bev suggested. “Rats are… they’re frightening. But they’re small. We could kill it.”

“Might be too small,” Ben said. “I mean, have you ever tried to catch a rat?”

“W-w-hat about… a person?” Bill asked. The room fell silent, watching Bill’s face. “P-p-people are easy to kill. And w-w-we’re all scared of s-s-someone.”

They all looked away. Yeah. Yeah: they were all scared of _someone_.

“Shouldn’t we agree on it?” Ben asked. They all turned to Mike, who shrugged.

“I don’t see why. It could be a different person for each of us. As long as it’s a person.”

They bent their heads and thought. Ben glanced up at them first.

“It’d be Bowers for me. Uh… Just so no one’s. Surprised.”

“It’s my mother,” Eddie grumbled. “It would be my mother.”

“My husband,” Bev whispered. She smiled tightly, twisting at her bare ring finger. “Ex. Husband.”

“My parents,” Mike said. “Not _them_ , but. Their deaths. Them dying.”

“G-g-georgie,” Bill said. “Not him, b-b-but. Not being able to protect him.”

“My father,” Stan admitted. “Not that- He- I don’t want to _kill_ him,” Stan insisted. “But. It’s what we fear. I always fear disappointing him.”

It was down to Richie.

And what could he fucking say?

What person was he afraid of most?

Himself? His own dirty desires? The way his heart loved and loved and loved, and couldn’t fucking _stop_. Eddie? No! No. Never Eddie. But…

“Connor Bowers,” Richie whispered, suddenly remembering it, remembering the _feeling_ of it. How he had all that _love_ inside him, all that _want_ , all that pathetic _need_. And Connor Bowers, in the absence of Eddie as an option, had been the unfortunate focus of all those feelings inside of himself that Richie was most ashamed of.

Eddie was looking at him, eyes boring holes into him. He understood. But the rest of the Losers were glancing around at each other, confused.

“There was more of them?” Ben asked.

“Cousin,” Richie explained. “Was around sometimes during that summer, visiting down from Bangor. Had a run-in in the arcade.”

The others nodded, accepting that. A lesser Bowers, but a Bowers was a Bowers. He didn’t really need to say more than that.

Richie looked at the ceiling for a bit. “So… what, are we just going to bring some guns or something?”

The rest of the Losers turned to stare at Richie. He held his hands up.

“What?! That’s how you kill a person, right?! Pennywise will turn into Connor Bowers for me and I’ll shoot him in the fucking face!” He shrugged. “I mean, kinda dick move, shooting a thirteen-year-old kid in the face, but he called me a ‘fairy,’ so, you know. Fair’s fair.”

“Statistically speaking, gun owners are more likely to have their guns used against them than successfully use them to defend themselves,” Eddie pointed out.

“Well then we’ll rent the guns,” Richie shot back, just to see Eddie’s mouth drop open, face contorting as his brain twisted itself in knots trying to understand the sheer stupidity it was currently facing. Richie giggled.

“Richie has a point,” Bev spoke up. Richie held a triumphant hand out at her. “How do we want to kill them? These are people we’re killing. Are we supposed to just strangle them to death? Stab them? Should we bring knives? Rope? A… A bomb?”

The room fell silent. After a long moment, to everyone’s surprise, it was Stan who answered: “I don’t trust anything complicated with Pennywise. Anything with parts that could go wrong, or misfire. It should be… like last time.”

“Melee weapons,” Richie put in. Ben shot him a look. “What? Am I the only one who plays video games here? Come on.”

“So, what?” Bill asked. “B-b-bats? Axes?”

“Fence posts,” Bev whispered.

“Chains,” Mike said.

Richie clapped his hands together. “Well, fuck yeah. Let’s hit up the hardware store in the morning.”

“Should we…” Ben glanced around the room. “Do you think it’s safe? To go to sleep?”

Richie made a point of _not_ looking at Stan.

“I’ve slept in this town every night for twenty-seven years,” Mike pointed out.

“Yeah, and we’ve had dinner together a hundred times and we were never attacked by a bunch of… flying monster fetuses, or eyeball monsters or the _fuck_ else was in those fucking fortune cookies,” Richie grumbled. Eddie just pointed at Richie and raised his eyebrows at Mike. Mike sighed.

“Okay, well…”

“Buddy system?” Richie asked, and it was impossible to miss the scoff and eye-roll Eddie was giving him. “I’m hearing buddy system?”

“There’s seven of us, asshole,” Eddie said.

“Well just for that, I call Stan,” Richie told him. Eddie looked so genuinely shocked that Richie had to laugh.

“Hey! Who’s going to be my buddy, then?” Eddie whined.

“I’ll be your buddy,” Ben offered. Richie did _not_ miss the look Bev shot him. Well well well. The straights were at it again.

“One g-g-group is going to have to be a group of th-th-three,” Bill pointed out, perfectly reasonably.

“I’ll stay with Stan and Richie,” Bev offered. She smiled at them. “Figure better to be with the married men, right? Protect my virtue.”

“I’m m-m-married,” Bill pointed out.

Everyone kind of… just looked between Bev and Bill at that. Even Bev was looking at him pityingly.

“G-g-guess it’s you and me, Mikey,” Bill said with a smile.

Mike grinned back. “Yeah. I’d love the chance to catch up more.”

After more drinks, and more discussion, and more shared memories, the Losers who were staying at the Inn piled out of Mike’s little house to begin the (thankfully) short drive over. Eddie snuck up behind Richie as they tread the familiar path down the street from Mike’s front door.

“If you’re married, _I’m_ married,” Eddie grumbled.

Richie feigned looking around, flipping his glasses up and down and squinting. “I’m sorry? Is there a ring on your finger, Eddie? I don’t see a ring…”

“You told Stan you were married but didn’t say it was to _me_?” Eddie hissed.

“Didn’t want the Losers to know you’re a bisexual bigamist,” Richie snorted.

Eddie grabbed his arm, stopping Richie as the rest divided themselves amongst their rental cars. “Did you tell Stan, uh…” Eddie’s eyes darted over to where Stan was standing by the car the three of them had rented from the airport together. Well: Eddie had rented it, because he insisted on being the one driving. “What did you tell Stan?”

“Did I tell Stan I love sucking dick?” Richie suggested. Eddie gave him a flat look.

“Yes, Richie. Did you tell Stan you love sucking dick. That’s what I wanted to know.”

Except it basically was. Richie shoved down the fear that burst in his stomach at even the vague whisper of such a thing out loud.

“He knows the missus is a mister, yeah,” Richie admitted. “So what?”

Eddie blinked. His expression was… unreadable. “So… nothing, Richie.” He paused, then started again. “That was pretty brave.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you, I was being fucking serious,” Eddie grumbled, shoving at Richie’s shoulder.

“Hey Eddie!” Ben called from his rental. “Are you coming with me or with Richie and Stan?”

Eddie glanced over at Richie just long enough to glare at him. “I’ll meet you there!” Eddie told Ben. “The rental is in my name and I don’t trust Richie to get it to the Inn without crashing it.”

“Hey!” Richie whined. Eddie grabbed his arm and shoved him towards the SUV: not that he fucking _could_ manhandle Richie without Richie letting him.

“Nice fucking stunt, rooming with Stan,” Eddie grumbled. “Last fucking night alive and I don’t even get laid.”

“Who said you weren’t getting laid?” Richie murmured out of the side of his mouth. “Send Ben out to drink with Bev for a while and then sneak over.”

“What about Stan?”

“I’ll send him down to play third wheel with the heteros,” Richie said. He looked down at Eddie and raised an eyebrow. “Or we could spend our last night on earth _not_ getting laid.”

Eddie tried to scowl, but the raw fear mingled with love was too pervasive on his face to hide. He reached up, hand stopping to rest only as high as Richie’s elbow, because they were still in front of everyone else, milling around their cars.

“If I had one night left on earth, I’d want to spend it in your arms.”

Richie swallowed thickly.

“Whatever happens after this…” Eddie started, and Richie tried to cut him off. But Eddie shook his elbow roughly. “No, no: listen. I started my divorce before I came out here, because this is it. One way or another. If I live or die: I want to do it married to you.”

“Eddie-”

Eddie’s hand dipped into his pocket and Richie watched, mouth open, as he pulled out his wedding band. _Their_ wedding band. And then he held it out to Richie, and stared up at him with those big, doe eyes. “If you’ll have me, that is.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Richie tilted his head back, willing himself not to cry. “Dude, I can’t put it on you here, they’re gonna know what we’re doing.”

“They won’t know,” Eddie said. But he took the ring and slipped it onto his own finger. “This okay?”

“Yes, it’s fucking okay, fuck,” Richie gasped. Don’t cry, don’t cry, he couldn’t fucking cry, the other Losers were _right_ there, Stan was _watching them_ for fuck’s sake. “I wore my ring becau-” Richie’s voice cracked and he stopped trying to talk. He felt Eddie’s fingers flutter against his elbow, just the lightest touch in place of a hug, a kiss, a gentle, wet, messy fuck that Richie cried the whole fucking way through.

“Fuck: am I getting fat?”

Richie snorted and was finally able to glance back down at Eddie, who was frowning down at his finger.

“Oh yeah, you’re the lard gut, between the two of us,” Richie sniffed.

“We can figure out who to tell and how to say it later,” Eddie told him, which was a huge fucking relief, because Richie didn’t know how to handle that, yet. It was one thing to be married in theory: it was another for your friends to see you with your spouse, the man you’d love so desperately since you were thirteen that not all the interdimensional clown magic in the world could keep them apart for good. Richie wasn’t sure he was ready for that kind of vivisection.

“What if they notice you’ve got a wedding ring on now?” Richie asked. “What if they notice it’s the same fucking ring as mine, dude?”

Eddie scoffed and gestured—with his left hand, his wedding ring hand, Richie’s eyes couldn’t help tracking it, watching the diamonds sparkle in the low yellow light of the phosphorous street lamps—at the Losers piling into their cars. “You think anyone’s gonna notice that sorta shit right now? We’re approximately twenty-four hours away from being fucking _murdered_ in the _sewers_ by a _demon clown_ , man. They got bigger worries.”

“ _I love you_.”

Eddie coughed and stared down at his shoes—were those fucking _Ferragamo’s_ , what an absolute _shit_ —before glancing off to the side, unable to meet Richie’s eyes. “Save it for later.” He quirked an eyebrow at Richie. “And, uh. Hurry up sending Stan down to hang out with Bev and Ben, alright?”

Richie practically skipped to their rental car, screaming “ _Shotgun!_ ” in Stan’s ear even though he’d been standing next to the front passenger door the entire time Richie and Eddie had been speaking.

* * *

“Ugh, fuck,” Eddie groaned, rolling out of bed. Richie lounged back against the pillows as he watched Eddie pad naked across the room to crack the window. “It smells like fucking sex in here,” Eddie commented, wafting his hands in front of the window uselessly.

“Well, Edward, when an insurance salesman and a comedian love each other very much…” Richie started in a faux-dad voice. Eddie rolled his eyes at the window, but he was fighting a smile, and his expression settled into something hopelessly fond no matter how hard he fought against it. After a moment, though, his brow creased into a frown, and he made his way back over to the bed.

“Hey.” He crawled on top of Richie, settling his weight on top of his hips and chest. Richie wrapped his arms around him automatically. There was nowhere else his hands would be, besides holding Eddie, when Eddie was within holding range. “I love you,” Eddie declared, almost angry about it. His eyes searched Richie’s. “I _love_ you.”

“I know,” Richie reassured him. Because he did: know. He knew the whole time: even when he hated Eddie, even when their lives were falling apart. Even when he was blaming Eddie for their pain, even when he didn’t _understand_ Eddie, even when he thought Eddie loved his easy life _more_ than he loved Richie: all through that, Richie always knew Eddie loved him.

The problem was, Sir Paul McCartney didn’t have it right: love _wasn’t_ all you needed. There was a lot more to it than that, unfortunately.

But now: now Richie knew that Eddie was going to live it. That was more important than the fact of Eddie’s love. And that’s what Eddie was declaring, ultimately. Richie’s hand slipped from Eddie’s back to clasp at his left hand, rubbing his thumb over the freshly-replaced wedding band. Now Richie knew Eddie was prepared to live it.

For whatever amount of time they had left to live.

The doorknob jiggled and Eddie absolutely _flung_ himself off Richie and over the side of the bed. Richie laughed so hard he thought maybe he peed himself a little, but the sheets were so nasty with their bodily fluids and lube at this point that who could tell? Eddie was cursing up a storm, scrambling for his clothes as someone knocked at the door.

“Hey? Richie?”

It was Stan, because of course it was. This was his room too, after all.

Eddie had one pant leg on, dick fully out—where was his underwear? Richie laughed himself sick, rolling sideways on the bed.

“ _I’m going to fucking kill you_ ,” Eddie hissed.

“Eddie?”

“Yeah!” Eddie shouted, voice strangled. “Sorry, uh. One minute!”

The door opened, and Eddie fell backwards away from it, tumbling dick over tit onto the ground. The new position at least allowed him to yank his pants up, and he zipped them so fast Richie winced, worrying about the integrity of his penis.

The chain that Richie had oh-so-thoughtfully slid into place while Eddie was busy yanking his dick out stopped the door from opening more than a couple inches. Richie shot a look over at Eddie, still on the floor, who flipped him the double-bird.

God, he loved him.

“Sorry, Eds is indecent,” Richie told Stan. Eddie threw his hands up, staring Richie down with the fire of the very forges of Hephaestus. Eddie gestured wildly to Richie’s naked body as he shoved on his own shirt.

Eddie really, really, really looked like he’d just fucked someone through a headboard. Richie beamed. Completely accurate, of course.

Reluctantly, and making faces at Eddie the whole time, Richie yanked on a pair of sweats that he wore to sleep. But he flipped Eddie off when Eddie gestured around, waiting for him to put on something else. Eddie rolled his eyes, but grabbed his underwear and jammed it into his pocket. Richie snorted softly as he unlatched the door.

“Sorry, we were talking,” Eddie explained in a rush. “Okay, see you tomorrow, Stan.” He blasted past Stan, head tilted down. Probably because he looked like he’d just been sucking dick. Which, again: accurate statement of fact.

Richie rolled his eyes and flopped back onto his ruined bed, fucking around on his phone as Stan used the bathroom and started puttering around with his suitcase. Then Stan stopped and glanced at Richie, the open window, and back at their room door. Richie stared at his phone and sweated, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Were you guys smoking pot in here or something?”

* * *

There were fucking birds chirping. _Birds chirping_! Richie couldn’t help but laugh, hysterically, and no one even looked at him funny for it. They were all a little crazy, right now. Like those gothy teenager t-shirts read: _We’re all mad, here_.

“Bev?” Mike asked, turning to her. He gestured at the quarry cliffside. “Do you want to do the honors?”

“You’re all still a bunch of weenies,” Bev grinned. She only had to toe off her shoes, jacket lost in Neibolt. With a victorious _“whoop!_ ” Bev raced forward in her stocking feet, flinging herself over the cliffside. Eddie stretched out his neck to peer down at the lake as best he could while remaining the maximum distance away. Far, far below—holy shit, they had done this as kids? Did they have a _death wish_?! A non-clown related one??—Bev broke the surface of the water and started swimming for the far side.

They boys started to strip their layers. Richie tossed down his jacket—probably completely fucking ruined, but it’d seen him through over a decade of hard wear and little care—and his buttoned shirt. Next to him, Eddie tossed down his hoodie. When everyone was down to socks and pants and undershirts, the six of them looked around at each other.

“Oh, fuck me,” Richie muttered. Then he grabbed Eddie and threw him over his shoulder.

“No, _NO, RICHIE-!!_ ”

It was no mean feat running and _flinging_ both himself and Eddie’s weight far over the edge of the cliff, but Richie had just enough adrenaline left in his system to manage it. Eddie screamed the whole way down.

The water was _fucking freezing_. It shocked the air from Richie’s lungs, causing him to lose track of Eddie in an instant as he struggled for the surface, every man for himself. He broke the surface gasping for air, glasses somehow still attached to his head by what must have been a subconscious instinct to hold them against his face just before he hit the water.

A few feet away, Eddie’s head broke the surface of the water, spluttering and somehow still screaming.

“I’m going to fucking kill you!” Eddie screamed. Richie was laughing so hard he didn’t realize Eddie was heading straight for him until Eddie’s fingernails scratched vicious lines into his bicep. Richie screamed himself at that, flailing to keep Eddie’s five-foot-seven (fucking five-foot-nine his _ass_ ) ball of demonic energy at arm’s length long enough for Richie to start swimming the _fuck_ out of there. He finally got a body-length between them and was able to really take off. Eddie dove after him, but Richie had a head start now, and the reach to leave Eddie in his wake.

Richie enveloped Bev in a hug when he reached her, pressing his face to her bloodstained and soaking wet hair. Bev beamed and hugged back, practically climbing into his arms and letting him spin her easily around, buoyed by the water. Behind them the rest of the Losers were slowly catching up. Eddie reached them first, moaning his displeasure as he slowly found his feet under himself again.

“You know this is a still body of water?” Eddie pointed out. “It’s stagnant. This whole fucking thing is probably one giant algae bloom during the summer. The only reason it’s not solid green right now is it’s fucking freezing.”

“Here we go,” Bev said with a smile.

“What?! It’s fucking true.” Eddie squinted down through the murky water. “Actually, just try not to disturb the sediment too much. You wouldn’t want risk a Naegleria infection.”

Bill was trying, and mostly failing, to float on his back. “What’s that?”

“Naegleria?” Eddie scoffed. “It’s an amoeba that enters your brain through your nose in dirty lake water. Kills you in under a _week_. It usually thrives in warmer temperatures, so we might be okay, but just in case-”

“Hey Eddie,” Richie called.

“Wh-”

Richie hucked a ball of mud directly into the center of Eddie’s face.

“What the fuck!!” Eddie screamed. “What the fuck!!!!”

He dove beneath the water, scrambling at his face. When he surfaced, mostly clean of the lake mud, he pointed a finger at Richie.

“I swear to fuck if I _die_ in a week from a _fucking amoeba_ after _defeating a transdimensional demon clown for the second time in three decades, I’m going to HAUNT THE EVER-LOVING SHIT OUT OF YOU, RICHIE!!_ ”

“Speaking of which: Hey Bill.”

“What?”

“What the fuck, man?”

All eyes turned to Bill, who gave up on trying to float in the less-than-buoyant lake water and ungracefully collected his feet under himself.

“What?”

Stan rose just enough above the surface of the water to clarify for him: “He wants to know how you got your person wrong.” That being said, Stan sank back down beneath the surface of the lake until only his head from the nose up peeked out.

“Guys, he doesn’t have to talk about it,” Ben protested. Mike nodded in agreement.

“Pennywise taps into our fears, sometimes our subconscious ones. The people we killed were merely symbols-”

“Yeah and Bill had to stab his thirteen-year-old-self in the face with an iron fencepost,” Richie laughed. “So like: what the hell, man?”

“It was my guilt about G-G-Georgie,” Bill explained, like that wasn’t _painfully_ obvious. “I blamed myself-”

“No shit,” Eddie said. He was still scrubbing mud off his face, and he kept missing a spot above his left eyebrow. Richie grinned helplessly over at him.

“But you knew that ahead of time! Why’d you think it was going to be Georgie?!” Richie asked.

“I don’t know!” Bill said. “I f-f-figured, because l-l-last time-”

“Aren’t you a writer?” Eddie asked, scrubbing at his hair.

“Yeah,” Richie grinned. “Aren’t you a _writer_?”

“Th-th-that was tr-tr-traumatizing!” Bill whined.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re all traumatized,” Richie said, splashing in Bill’s direction.

“Yeah: I had to kill my mom!” Eddie pointed out. Richie paddled his way over to drape himself too-heavily around Eddie’s shoulders. Deliberately he sucked a thumb into his mouth and wiped the last bit of mud off Eddie’s eyebrow. Eddie glared up at him.

“Yeah! Eddie had to kill his _mom_ , Bill! Show a little sympathy!”

Eddie batted up helplessly at Richie, slowly sinking beneath his weight. “Get the fuck off me, Richie.”

“Hmm?” Richie pretended not to hear him and turned to Stan. “And Stan had to kill his dad!”

Stan was bobbing around, just his forehead and nose above the water, watching them all from behind his water-flecked glasses. He surfaced just enough to say: “Can we not talk about that?” He frowned and looked down at the water. “It wasn’t about _him_ , it was the _symbol_ -”

“Don’t worry Stanley,” Richie shouted from where he was practically on top of Eddie’s shoulders. “I got some video of it for the next family Yom Kippur dinner. We’re all invited, right?”

“Richie, get _off_ ,” Eddie spluttered, now nearly sunk beneath the water. Suddenly the bottom dropped out from under Richie, Eddie sinking like a stone. Richie scrambled, falling the short distance left to the surface of the water, bobbing down a foot or two as he scrambled for Eddie’s shoulders again. He raced to the surface, trying to wipe at his glasses enough to see, but it was a losing battle. “Eddie?! Eddie!”

He wasn’t surfacing. Where the fuck was the little turd?! Panicking, Richie dipped back below the surface, squinting through the murky water. Did the fucking amoeba get him already? Was that a real thing?

A weight latched onto Richie’s back. Panicking, he kicked off the bottom and surfaced fast, gasping. “What the fuck!”

“How do you fucking like it!” Eddie shouted, clambering on top of Richie’s shoulders.

“Sorry, is there someone up there?” Richie teased, even as he was grabbing at Eddie and trying to yank him around. “I couldn’t tell: it feels like a fucking gnat is sitting on my shoulders.”

“Fuck you! Muscle weighs more than fat, you lard-ass!”

“Seven inches is seven inches, Eds,” Richie teased. He yanked on Eddie’s calf, slowly winning the battle to pull him around front. Eddie grappled to stay on top of him, even as his legs slipped from Richie’s shoulders he grabbed on with his hands, trying to shove him down.

“I’ll show you seven inches-” Eddie growled. Richie lit up.

“Oh yeah? Promise?”

“God, you’re such a fucki- _mmph_.”

And then Eddie had to stop screaming insults at Richie because Richie’s tongue was in his mouth, and as much as Eddie would never admit it, he preferred sucking on Richie’s tongue over wagging his own at Richie. A little bit. Like, sixty-forty.

“Richie!” Bev gasped. “What about your husband!”

And that was fucking rich, coming from her, Richie thought pettily. But Eddie’s skin was wet, and his thighs had settled themselves around Richie’s waist, and now it really, really didn’t fucking matter, at all, because the only thing that mattered was Eddie.

“Oh you’ve got to be fucking _kidding_ me,” Stan shouted. “You two _stayed in my guest room_.”

“Sorry, what’s going on?” Ben asked. “I thought Eddie had a wife?”

“Well, they’re getting a divorce,” Bev pointed out.

“No, I mean: a _wife_ ,” Ben said. “Like… like a woman. You know…”

“Oh, Ben, honey.” Bev swam over to drape herself in Ben’s arms. “Bisexuals exist, you know.”

“For the _record_ ,” Eddie replied, extracting himself from Richie’s face for a moment. Richie helpfully spun them around so Eddie was facing the rest of the group. “I don’t think I am. Uh. Look, it’s… everyone goes on their own journey, and…” he glanced down at Richie. “I actually don’t want to have this conversation.”

Richie shrugged. “Works for me.” Then he leaned up and went back to sucking face with Eddie, which was way better than Eddie trying to untangle twenty-seven years of repression and sexual exploration in front of his oldest friends.

“Seriously,” Stan stated, again: “What the fuck did you two do in my guest room?”


	10. The Rest of Their Lives

Richie spun around slowly in Eddie’s—Myra’s? Eddie-and-Myra’s?—living room. Eddie flushed, embarrassment at the knowledge of what this space must look like to Richie morphing quickly into irritation, because if nothing else Eddie was _great_ at sublimating his vulnerabilities into anger.

“Don’t say it,” Eddie growled as he moved quickly around the room, picking up the few things that were his and packing them away into a cardboard box.

“How do you know what I was going to say?” Richie asked. He spun around some more, taking it in. “ _I_ don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Myra likes designing shit,” Eddie explained. He tugged a stack of three hardback books from under a framed photo of Myra with her sisters. He could probably just leave these… he read the spines as he thought. Was there anything he couldn’t just buy on Kindle if he really needed it?

When Eddie realized Richie hadn’t said anything, he glanced up, afraid of what bit Richie might be pulling, or face he was making. But Richie was just standing with his back to Eddie, hands in his hoodie pockets as he contemplated the wall. Or, more accurately, the photos in a collage frame on the wall.

Eddie tucked the books back under the photo frame. He didn’t need them. He probably didn’t need the Xbox, either—Richie had to have one. And if he didn’t, Eddie could just buy a new one. Didn’t matter.

They were their wedding photos. Eddie knew what collage Richie was looking at. Eddie’s heart dropped in his stomach as he stood there, rocking back and forth on his heels, wondering if he should step forward and be with Richie, or stay away and let him have this moment in private.

In a moment Richie made the choice for him, turning away from the frame with a weak smile, eyes wet behind his glasses. Eddie grimaced, throat working its way around an apology, trying to figure out how exactly to phrase it.

But Richie just threw a thumb over his shoulder at the photos.

“Fuck, it’s weird: I remember you at that age. Looking like that.”

Eddie winced. But Richie was quick to shake his head.

“It’s alright. We couldn’t… We’re here now, right?”

“Right,” Eddie agreed. Even though it felt too easy; even though it felt like Richie was absolving him of sins Eddie hadn’t even begun to admit. But Richie grinned wider now, more easily, as he continued his slow walk through the house.

“So is this like… your style…” Richie asked, gesturing around with one hand, palm down.

Eddie snorted. “I literally have no fucking idea what my style is.”

Richie nodded. “Cool. Cool cool cool.” He bent down to sniff some candles on the mantle. “I mean, not that it’s bad, or anything. Just. You know. I don’t really know what your life looks like: we’ve only ever hung out in the fucking Derry Inn, you know?”

It felt like an accusation, but Eddie knew Richie didn’t mean it that way. It was just the fact of the matter. What Richie was saying was he wanted to know Eddie: wanted to know how he liked to decorate his living room, if his aesthetic was more modern minimalist or cozy cottage-core. It was romantic, and sweet.

The only problem was, Eddie honestly had no idea what he liked. Besides Richie.

He knew what he _didn’t_ like, though. He didn’t like all this, for instance. Tasteless aughts chic, too much white molding and light, open colors. Knick-kacks crowding most surfaces, like candles and stacked books and collage frames.

Actually, he didn’t hate photos on the wall. Just didn’t like the collage frame.

That was something, at least. Somewhere to start.

“Come on.” Eddie touched Richie’s elbow, still having to remind himself that he was allowed, that it wasn’t an unwanted touch, that Richie was his and he was Richie’s and they _had_ each other now: they weren’t going anywhere.

They weren’t about to forget.

“Let’s dig out the rest of my suitcases.”

“The rest?” Richie trailed after him to the bedroom. “What do you mean, the _rest_?”

* * *

It took two trips to the post office, even with both of them going, but eventually everything Eddie wanted shipped was packed away and shipped, and everything he couldn’t let out of his sight was split between four suitcases and one carry-on.

“I cannot fucking believe you have four full-sized suitcases,” Richie observed.

“Why is that so fucking unbelievable?” Eddie griped, but he was smiling as he scrolled through his phone, trying to think about what restaurants were nearby that Richie would like. They’d only ever eaten together in Derry, which wasn’t exactly the UN of food choices. He wondered if Richie liked Thai, or Indian, or sushi. Not that Eddie was really fond of any of those, but _Richie_ might be.

“You can only bring two suitcases on a fucking flight with you,” Richie pointed out. “And you have to pay for the second one.”

“Three.”

“What?”

Eddie looked up from his phone. “You can bring three suitcases. Two checked bags, one carry-on.”

Richie stared at Eddie for a long moment. Then he sighed and started unbuckling his pants. Eddie dropped his phone and pushed himself onto his elbows on the hotel room bed.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting naked,” Richie sighed. His pants dropped. He stepped out of them (he wasn’t wearing underwear. Fucking _gross_ , _Richie_ ) and started unbuttoning his shirt.

“I can see that,” Eddie agreed. “But why the fuck are you getting naked? You said you were hungry.”

“Yeah, but you just said the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard and now I need you to fuck me.”

Eddie glared at him. Richie’s shirt fell off, and then he was standing there with his flaccid dick flopping out beneath his heather grey t-shirt.

“You are so fucking stupid,” Eddie told him.

“No, that’s what _I’m_ saying,” Richie replied. He spread his hands out. “Take me now, you fucking moron.”

Eddie laughed and rolled over onto his stomach, mostly to hide the fact that he couldn’t stop fucking _smiling_.

Is that what being in love was? Is this what it felt like to have a spouse? What it was _supposed_ to feel like?

Fuck, Eddie had a lot of lost time to make up.

“Do you like Thai?”

“Yeah.” Richie crawled onto the bed alongside Eddie, slinging a thigh over his, bumping shoulders. Eddie glanced over and saw he was still naked from the waist down, and still wearing his grey undershirt. It was so fucking ridiculous that Eddie had to turn away again, muffling a laugh into his own shoulder. Richie squirmed against him, rocking his thigh on top of Eddie’s, like he knew his bit was succeeding.

Fuck. Eddie had a lifetime of Richie trying to make him laugh ahead of him.

Eddie turned back, letting Richie catching a glimpse—just a _glimpse_ —of his smile. He was rewarded for his benevolence with a kiss.

“Do _you_ like Thai?” Richie asked. He bumped his shoulder into Eddie’s. “I wouldn’t guess it.”

“Not really,” Eddie admitted. “I’m pretty bland.”

“No, Mr. polos-and-hoodies?”

“We were trekking through the fucking sewers,” Eddie pointed out. “I have nice clothes; I dress _nice_ sometimes.”

“Where do you want to eat?”

Eddie shrugged. “What do you feel like? There’s plenty of places around here.”

“ _You_ know what I feel like,” Richie murmured. He humped his hips lightly against Eddie’s side. Groped his ass. Nuzzled at his neck.

Actually…

Eddie rolled onto his side, grabbing at Richie.

“Want to just order room service and fuck?”

Richie’s face went slack with joy. “Oh my God I knew I loved you for a reason.”

Their lips crashed together, Richie’s body enveloping Eddie’s, Eddie squirming on top of him because they _both_ knew Richie wanted to get railed through the headboard of their hotel bed.

Eventually they got around to ordering room service. They ate it on the bed together and Richie was so careful about crumbs that afterwards Eddie dragged him into their ridiculous, oversized tub with jets and the whole nine yards for “dessert.”

Yeah, it was corny even when he said it in the silence of his own mind.

* * *

The apartment was ultra-modern. Clean lines, lots of glass and metal. If it wasn’t for splashes of color in the forms of framed posters on the walls Eddie might have been worried his vision had gone entirely black-and-white, somehow. The posters were posters of Richie’s stuff—his tours, his shows. It was pretty classy. _Shockingly_ classy, actually. Eddie found himself stopping in front of one framed posters: Richie’s face from the shoulders up, one hand splayed across his face, knocking askew his glasses, face all scrunched as if to say _Did I do that?_ The color scheme was bold pinks, yellows, purples. It was way cooler than Richie’s old shit had any right being marketed as. And Richie looked damn good in it.

“See anything you like?”

Eddie shrugged. He could hear Richie stalking up behind him, was waiting for it when Richie draped his arms over Eddie’s shoulders.

“Surprisingly, yeah. This is a great poster.”

“Thank Steve,” Richie said. “My manager. He handles all that shit. Outsourcing it, I mean. I don’t think the guy could draw a stick figure.”

A chill went down Eddie’s spine at the name. _Steve_. He knew who that was. Or thought he did.

“Steve’s...” Eddie trailed off. Richie didn’t offer up any more information. So Eddie did what he did best: throw a hissy fit.

“Show me a picture.”

Richie frowned, letting his arms drop as Eddie turned around. “Huh?”

Eddie held his hand out imperiously. “Picture. Of Steve. Let’s see him.”

“What? Why?”

“You said he looked like me.”

Panic skittered across Richie’s expression. Eddie fought down a smirk. Uh- _huh_. He remembered.

“Eddie, it’s not- Steve’s _straight_ -”

“Yeah, so? Straight guys don’t look like me?”

“Baby, I love _you_ -”

Eddie held a hand up. He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose.

“ _First_ of all…” In, then out. He opened his eyes and glared. “Don’t ever call me fucking _baby_ again, or I’ll put you throw the fucking wall.”

Richie’s pupils dilated and he sucked in a breath. “Gotta be honest, I just popped like, a half chub.”

“Good to know,” Eddie commented. “Second: it’s not _that_. I just want to see who your subconscious thought looks like me. I mean, he’s still your manager now, right? So it was a pretty good match.”

“He’s a good manager,” Richie agreed. Reluctantly he pulled out his phone. “Okay, fuck. I dunno, I guess he’s got a Facebook or something…” Richie sucked on his teeth as he scrolled. After a moment he nodded and flipped the phone around to Eddie. “There.”

Okay, that was some kind of bullshit. Eddie scowled down at the guy on Richie’s phone. First of all, he looked easily two inches shorter than Eddie. Second of all, he wasn’t nearly as handsome—if Eddie did say so himself. His face was rounder, more like a baby-face. Eddie was pretty happy with how as he had aged all the sharp, mousy angles of his youth had filled out into strength: a strong jaw, high cheekbones, the slopes on either side of his forehead. _This_ guy, though: he didn’t have any of that! He had chubby cheeks, for fuck’s sake!

He wasn’t sure if he felt insulted or relieved. In the end, he passed Richie’s phone back to him with a scowl that was mostly put-on.

“But I’m hotter.”

“Smoking hot, hotter than the sun, it’s like comparing a freezer to an oven, lamb.”

Eddie glared as Richie wrapped his arms around his waist and tried to pull him close. “Am I going to have to reject every pet name individually? Can we run through them all at once so I can get it over with?”

“I’ve got a lifetime’s worth of pet names saved up,” Richie told him. “You’ll see. One day I’ll say one and you’ll answer to it and that’s it, you’ll be stuck with it until the die you die.”

Eddie turned away from that, because he knew he couldn’t school his expression quickly enough. They were, after all. Stuck with each other until the day they died. They’d promised it, when they were thirty and fucking stupid and in love. And they still meant it, and they still were _doing it_ , when they were forty and still fucking stupid and still in love.

“So is this your style?” Eddie asked, indicating the apartment.

Richie spun in a circle dramatically, like he was looking at his apartment for the first time. “Honestly? I literally have no fucking idea what my style is.” He repeated Eddie’s words from New York back to him.

“So this…?”

“Oh this? Steve paid someone to do this when he came in one day and found I was still doing that college kid thing where I had a wall of beer cans.”

“That’s fucking… abhorrent.”

“I was thirty-five.”

“So now I have to take my pants off.”

Richie giggled and nodded encouragingly. Eddie rolled his eyes and kept his pants on. Though, maybe later… After they’d packed up some of Richie’s shit. Hopefully Steve’s interior designer had made Richie get a grown-up bed, because Eddie had a feeling that left to his own devices Richie would still be sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor.

The minimalism of the style wasn’t _unappealing_. It was neat and it was clean, uncluttered and aesthetically appealing. But it didn’t especially feel like Richie, or like Eddie, for that matter. When Eddie tried to take that line of thought a step further—figure out what his style did feel like, or what he could picture Richie’s style looking like, he found himself drawing a blank.

But that was okay. For now. The fact that Richie didn’t have an aesthetic figured out for himself either was strangely reassuring—much as Eddie felt like he should find it annoying. Might have, if he had any fucking clue what his own aesthetic was. But neither of them did, so maybe… Maybe that was something they could figure out together?

It was a thrilling thought. Terrifying, at age forty, to have no idea how you wanted to decorate a home. But terrifying like jumping over the quarry cliff: something that could be exciting, with the right partner.

* * *

Eddie and Richie stood on Stan’s porch, looking out onto the quiet suburban street. As one, they both reached up and wiped sweat from their brows. Richie pulled an exaggerated face and shook his hand out like he was in a Looney Toon’s cartoon. Like a fucking adult, on the other hand, Eddie discreetly wiped his hand off on his jeans.

Fuck. What the fuck did adults wear in Atlanta during the summer? Because it sure as fuck couldn’t be jeans. Was he going to have to invest in linen pants? Linen suits? Surely people didn’t wear that outside _Dukes of Hazards_ episodes, right? But then how the fuck else did they avoid heatstroke every year?

“Here you go. Sweet tea.”

Once again moving in unison, Richie and Eddie spun around, meeting Stan as he carried an honest-to-God tray of drinks, complete with lime wedges and pitcher and all, out onto the porch. Richie and Eddie helped themselves to their glasses, both of them peering curiously at the golden-brown drink within.

“Sweet tea?” Eddie asked.

“Just drink it. Trust me,” Stan told him. He took a lemon wedge and squeezed it into his own drink before taking a long, hydrating sip. It looked incredibly refreshing. And it was so fucking hot out.

If it had been Richie telling him to “just trust me” and drink some unfamiliar concoction, Eddie would have thrown it in his face. But since it was Stan, Eddie figured he’d he was safe. He took a cautious pull at the icy-cold glass. Immediately his face screwed up at the overwhelming _sweetness_ of the beverage.

“Holy shit, is there any tea in this sugar?” Eddie asked. His tongue felt _scuzzy_. For fuck’s sake.

Stan smirked at him over his glass. “There’s your first lesson, then: make sure you ask for unsweetened.”

“Why would I ask for this at all?”

“Trust me,” Stan told him. “You need to figure out how you like your iced tea. You’re going to find yourself at backyard barbeques and office potlucks where your options to drink are ‘sweetened or unsweetened?’”

Eddie knew he was pulling a face, but he could help it. He had never exactly been the office potluck sort of guy. Not before he had his memory back, at least. That was one of the things he felt pretty sure wasn’t changing even now. Like his temper, or his fastidiousness.

He was working on the inhaler thing, though. And the hypochondria—which they called “health anxiety,” now. Apparently. He was still shopping therapists in Atlanta, but he’d gotten that far at least. There were parts of his personality he’d be happy to… soften.

Richie smacked his lips loudly and dropped straight into a Foghorn Leghorn Voice. “Well I do say, I do _say_ , Mister Uris, this is one heavenly sip of ambrosia straight from the sugar cane fields.”

“Holy shit,” Eddie snapped. “Fucking really? You can’t make _slavery_ jokes in the fucking deep south, dude.”

And there were other parts of his personality Eddie was fine leaving… prickly. He needed to survive being married to Richie Tozier, after all.

“Why not? _They’re_ the ones who did it. They can’t take a joke about it?”

“Asshole: we’re a gay couple. Maybe don’t offend people in every way you can in the first week?”

“It’s better than the Uncle Remus Voice he used to do,” Stan pointed out, lips twisting wryly.

Eddie groaned at the memory. Richie squirmed.

“Hey, I was like, nine. And it was the eighties! I didn’t know any better.”

“You used to do that voice in front of _Mike_ ,” Eddie reminded him.

Richie pressed a hand to his forehead. “Okay: not my finest hour. But! That’s all the more reason to make jokes about slavery that’ll make the white people uncomfortable! Like an act of contrition! Punching up! All that shit!”

“You should make him a fucking… handbook, or something,” Eddie told Stan. “Crash Course in Southern Hospitality, aka, How to Not Get Us Both Killed.”

Stan smiled into his tea. “It’s not so bad. Southern hospitality really _is_ southern hospitality. Everyone will be polite. To your face…”

“Lots of ‘bless your hearts?’” Richie asked in his best southern belle.

“More like ‘Well of course I don’t think _you’re_ going to hell: you’re G-d’s chosen people, after all,’” Stan replied.

A dull frisson of shock went through Eddie at that. “What the _fuck_?” he whispered, with much feeling. Stan chuckled softly and sipped at his tea.

“Yeah. That’s happened.” He lifted one index finger from his sweating tea glass and pointed it at Richie. “ _You’re_ going to hell, though. Because you’re an idol-worshipping Catholic.” He turned his index finger on Eddie. “Though they’ll probably clock you for the Catholic. _Kaspbrak_.”

“Don’t you think the gay thing is going to land us in hell first?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah!” Richie piped up. “We’re Godless sodomites! Men lying with men, and all that!”

“ _You’re_ the sodomite,” Eddie muttered under his breath.

“Well that makes you aiding and abetting,” Richie chirped right back.

“Oh you’ll go to hell for that, for sure,” Stan told them. “But they’ll find out about the religion soon enough. First conversation with your neighbors will be ‘here’s this casserole, so what church are y’all attending?’”

Richie grabbed Eddie’s elbow and tugged. “I changed my mind. Sorry, honey, you’ll have to leave that beautiful Tudor to rot. I’ll buy you one twice the size in Chicago.”

“Fuck you, I’m moving here for the weather,” Eddie told him. He had almost said _not for the company_ , but of course, that was exactly _why_ they were moving here. He nodded at Stan. “You know the number one cause of heart attacks in men fifty and older is shoveling snow?”

“You won’t get enough to shovel,” Stan agreed. “But the city does shut down anytime it gets two inches.”

“Just like-!” Richie started, before Eddie kicked him in the shins. Richie beamed at Eddie, even as he hopped around in one foot and moaned in pain.

“I’m really glad you guys picked here,” Stan said. He looked down at his hands, unable to quite meet their eyes with the full force of what he was saying. “Out of everywhere, it’s…”

Richie shrugged. He wasn’t good with sincerity either, of course. But he sucked on his teeth and turned his head, squinting down the heavily-shaded road the Uris’ lived on. “Well, me and Tyler Perry go way back. And everything’s getting filmed here these days, not just comedy. Atlanta’s going to be renamed Netflanta pretty soon, with all those sweet streaming dollars they’re raking in. Good as place as any.”

“We wanted to be near you,” Eddie said. He wasn’t exactly good with sincerity either, but Stan deserved to hear it. Eddie loved Stan—not as much as Richie did, but as much as he loved any of the Losers. More, even: Stan was one of the original four. Him, Eddie, Richie, and Bill. Before any of the others had come along, completing the circle, it had been them: squirmy little boys with sticky hands and high-pitched giggles, trading X-Men comics and saving up a nickel from their lunch money every day so they could go buy candy and rot their teeth out on the weekends. Stan with his birds, and his merit badges, and his books. Quiet, sweet Stan, who Eddie might have never seen again, if it wasn’t for Richie’s gut feeling.

Stan nodded, still not looking at them. He smiled, eventually, before he managed to look up. His eyes were wet, but that was okay: Richie’s were too. Eddie didn’t even need to look to know that.

“When’s Mrs. Uris get back from canasta?” Richie announced, too-loud. “I need to gossip with her about her dorky husband.”

“She’s at a faculty meeting,” Stan reminded him.

“To-may-toe, to-mah-toe,” Richie waved him off. “Alright, come on, let us in to raid your kitchen, this flower is _wilting_.”

* * *

Somehow, to Eddie’s great surprise, Florida wasn’t hotter than Georgia. Or, maybe it was: the thermometer said it was. But out on the beach, with the breeze from the ocean on their necks, it wasn’t so bad.

Of course, it was only ten am. Eddie was kind of horrified wondering what it would feel like at noon. Or three. Did everyone in Florida take naps in mid-afternoon, was that something he’d heard once, or was he just misremembering _Gone with the Wind_? Eddie gulped down the water he’d ordered with the pitcher of mimosas they’d ordered for the table. Well, even if the rest of the state didn’t, _they_ always could, if they wanted to. After all, they were on vacation.

(Eddie thought about their cool hotel room, banana-leaf fan spinning lazy over their heads. Sweaty, lazy sex with Richie, maybe nothing more than a couple mutual handjobs, followed by a three-hour nap, blankets kicked off the end of the bed. Richie’s thigh thrown over Eddie’s, and Eddie curled up on the absolute far edge of the bed, trying to escape the furnace that was Richie’s body. Sweating on the sheets as the slept, waking up and having slow, sticky sex again—Richie would probably want to blow him, because Richie always liked tasting him when he got especially musky. A cold shower in their hotel room. Fresh clothes—fresh _underwear_. Standing out on the balcony and looking out on the ocean. Feeling the evening breeze as the heat of the day slowly started to dissipate. It wasn’t a bad thought. Not at all.)

“I thought we could go down and rent jet skis after this,” Mike was saying. Eddie shook himself out of his fantasy and refocused.

“Why the fuck would we do that?” he replied coldly. Beside him, Richie giggled.

Mike looked at Eddie like he was genuinely confused by his question. “What do you mean? I thought it’d be fun.”

“Riding the equivalent of a motorcycle with no helmet and no training?” Eddie asked. “In the _ocean_?”

“Well that’s kinda… the safe part,” Mike pointed out. “If you wipe out you just fall in the water.”

Yeah, no. Eddie had been doing _research_ since they agreed to come down and visit Mike in Florida. Because “It’s so close, you guys!” and “you can just drive down I-95!” Yeah, well, if “close” meant “six hours,” and “I-95” was the same as “I-75 to I-10 to I-95,” then sure, _maybe_!

“You said we didn’t have to get in the water,” Eddie reminded him.

“You wouldn’t really be in the water. Only if you fell off-”

“The shark attack capital of the _world_ ,” Eddie reminded him. “Of the _world_.”

“Come on,” Mike tried to smile. “You of all people should know, the risk-”

“The risk is a lot lower if you _never get in the water_ ,” Eddie pointed out. “Pretty sure no one’s been attacked by a fucking shark on land since SNL in the 70s.”

“ _Candygram_ ,” Richie said, in a passable Chevy Chase impression.

“Is that even right?” Mike asked. “Of the _world_? Not somewhere off Australia, or Hawaii-?”

Eddie jammed his finger down on the plastic tabletop. “It was from the Florida Museum! The International Shark Attack Files!”

Richie scrunched up his face contemplatively as he lifted his mimosa to his mouth. “That sounds like a Florida tourism thing.”

“Why the fuck would- That doesn’t make any _sense_ ,” Eddie protested. He grabbed his drink and waved it at Richie. “Why the fuck would a _beach_ town _want_ to be the capital of _shark attacks_?!”

“Everyone wants to be number one,” Richie speculated.

Eddie stared at him with his mouth open. Richie was just grinning at him, eyes sparkling over the top of his glass as he sipped at his mimosa.

“At _shark attacks_?!”

“Well it’s _something_!”

Later that night, Eddie tip-toed across the tile floor of their hotel room, bitching the entire way to the bed. Richie watched him from where he was already snuggled up in his robe, having taken first go at the shower (and failing to convince Eddie to join him). Eddie hucked up onto the bed as fast as he could, jamming his toes under Richie’s calves. Richie rolled to his side happily, squeezing his legs together helpfully.

“It’s eighty degrees in here, you can’t be cold,” Richie pointed out.

“It’s just disgusting have tile floors in the bedroom,” Eddie grumbled, sinking down into his hotel-provided terrycloth robe. “And dangerous! What if one of us falls out of bed?”

“What are we, toddlers?”

“Not while we’re _sleeping_.”

Richie snickered. Eddie scoffed and gestured around, as if to say _what_?! _It wouldn’t be the first time it happened_! He didn’t have to say all that, because Richie knew what he meant. Richie always knew what he meant, even when he didn’t.

That didn’t even make sense, but this was technically a sort of honeymoon (at least, it was the first non-Derry, non-work, non-moving city they’d traveled to together), so Eddie was willing to think stupid romantic thoughts inside the privacy of his own skull. So long as they didn’t go any further than that.

“They just have it so it’s easier to clean,” Eddie pointed out. He shuddered dramatically, even as he pressed himself up against Richie’s chest. Naturally Richie indulged him, wrapping an arm around Eddie and holding him close.

They’d never gotten a honeymoon. Eddie was going to milk this for all it was worth.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Richie asked. His lips were pressed to Eddie’s hair.

That… was a good point. But it didn’t _feel_ cleaner. It had the feel of a place that needed to be easy to clean because it so often was _filthy_. Eddie sighed and turned around in Richie’s arms, sliding sideways so he was straddling him in a sort of lazy, prone sort of way. Richie’s face was all scrunched down, triple- and quadruple-chinned from this position.

“Want to see if we can fuck the bed across the room?” Eddie proposed.

Richie lifted his hips against Eddie, pressing what was at least a half-chub against his hip through double layers of fluffy terrycloth robes. “And if we should fail to succeed, we can try, try again!”

* * *

The items on their table were, in order from most healthy to least: pickles, soda bread, salt and vinegar fries (“chips!” Bill’s voice corrected cheerily), apple butter for the soda bread, scotch eggs, fried fish, and coleslaw. Eddie rummaged through his bag (“murse!” Richie’s voice corrected him smugly) and dug out a Zantac. He was going to need it with the amount of simple carbs and sodium spread out before him. Didn’t anyone in this country eat vegetables? Vegetables that weren’t picked or had all the nutrients steamed out of them first?

“I’m just saying: I thought this country was supposed to be full of alcoholics?” Richie was saying, in the middle of an argument with Bill. “I haven’t had a hangover one fucking day we’ve been here.”

“Are you saying you _want_ a hangover?” Eddie pointed out. He popped the Zantac and dry-swallowed it.

“I’d like the _option_ ,” Richie pointed out. “But that’s the problem! Fucking _eleven_? _Really_?! Fuck, the parties I went to in my twenties didn’t _start_ until one.”

“You just need to start drinking earlier,” Eddie replied. He sighed and speared at some of the fries (“Chips!”). No ketchup, either. He knew better than to ask, by now, but he still missed it. Hell, he’d take it just to have some semblance of fruit on his plate.

“That’s the _other_ problem,” Richie continued. “I couldn’t if I fucking wanted to, right? They eat dinner at eight, nine at night! And then the bars close at eleven? How the fuck fast am I supposed to drink? I’m supposed to eat dinner and then run to the bar as fast as my bloated ass can waddle and just start slamming them back?”

“I think you’re supposed to start drinking with dinner. Or after work,” Eddie said. He squeezed lemon over his fish. At least that was sort of a fruit. “Or, again: you could not _try_ to get obliterated.”

“But it’s _London_ ,” Richie whined. “It’s like, my way of honoring the rock gods who came before me! Bowie! Jagger! Freddie! I _have_ to get smashed, to demonstrate the depth of my awe and respect!”

“When’d you become a m-m-musician?” Bill teased. Richie flipped him off. Gleefully Bill held up two fingers back, in the English version of flipping the bird. Richie held up his other hand in imitation of Bill’s, waving both hands back and forth so that Bill was sufficiently flipped off in the tradition of either country.

“I thought we already ‘honored the rock gods’ by finding Heddon street and almost getting run over doing the Abbey road thing,” Eddie pointed out.

“It’s not honoring them until you’ve peed drunk against a building at three am,” Richie sighed wistfully.

“I c-c-could make sure that happens,” Bill offered. “Come out to a c-c-cast party one night with m-m-me and Audra.”

“Hey yeah, Eds?”

Eddie sighed and threw down the fork and knife he’d been using to try and peel the batter off his fish and picked up a vinegar and salt-coated fry. For fuck’s sake.

“Might as well,” Eddie bitched. “Not like I could have any _more_ heartburn tonight if I tried.” He stuck a fry out and pointed it at Bill. “But on the condition that we eat dinner at somewhere expensive tomorrow. I don’t fucking care about the price. I need greens, and non-fried proteins, or I am going to lose it. How does anyone in this country make it to fifty without a fucking coronary, huh?!”

“Don’t be a brat, Eds, there’s plenty of skinny Brits,” Richie pointed out. He stole a fry off Eddie’s plate and made a face. “I mean, how about all those rock gods, huh? Skinny as shit.”

“Yeah because they did heroin and didn’t fucking eat, Richie.”

“I’m t-t-texting Audra,” Bill told them.

Richie sighed and glanced around the pub. “I know they’ll give me shit for it, but do you think they _have_ ketchup? Like, if I _asked_?”

* * *

“I’m fucking starving,” Richie moaned as they made their way through the streets of Budapest on a clear, cool spring night. It was absolutely beautiful: clear skies, just enough chill in the air to walk shoulder-to-shoulder in a jacket, trees lining the boulevards breaking out in a manic explosion of pink and green buds, racing towards spring.

But dear fuck, it was midnight, and they were both starving (Richie more than Eddie), and the only thing open were bars, and not the kind that also served food, as far as Eddie could tell? Not to mention they were scattered and hidden—a bombed-out courtyard here, a repurposed apartment bloc there. It was all very _hip_ , of course, don’t get him wrong: if he had been twenty-five, with cash to burn, and decidedly cooler than he ever was at twenty-five (or fifteen, or forty-five…) he would have loved it. The twenty-five-year-olds who seemed to populate the entire city sure seemed to be having the time of their lives. Young professionals, just flush with enough cash from a first grown-up job, apartments, college behind them, single and on the hunt…

Eddie was exhausted just looking at them. Okay, sure: the _romance_ of it all. But right now he had a hungry husband fading fast against his arm, and this city just didn’t seem to be made for full-sized Americans on the wrong side of middle-age.

“Come on,” Eddie nudged Richie down a side street. “We’re only two blocks from the hotel.”

“And you’ve got a steak smuggled in your luggage? Eddie, I knew I married you for a reason. Other than your killer dick.”

“Jesus, Richie,” Eddie swore. “No, I was going to say: if we pass anything that’s open on the way there we can get something, and if not we can check out the room service, right?”

Richie’s mouth dropped open in an absolutely jaw-cracking yawn, head tilted back and lips quivering like a bear straight from a cartoon. He completed the look by scratching his stomach as he flopped sideways against Eddie.

“ _Husbaaanddd_ ,” he whined. “ _Provide_ for me.”

Normally Eddie might shove Richie off him, but it was chilly and Richie’s extra warmth was welcome right then. “I literally am. Didn’t you hear the plan?”

“I’m eviscerating Ben on social media tomorrow,” Richie announced. “Jerkface architect hosts a party that doesn’t have enough food and left me to _starve_ and _die_ in a foreign country.”

“Pretty sure he didn’t organize the catering,” Eddie pointed out.

“You think a former fatty would keep better tabs on the food sitch,” Richie grumbled.

“Dude, not cool.”

“Dude, it’s fine, as a _current_ fatty, I’m allowed to use that word. That is _our_ word.”

Eddie pressed a hand to his face. “Fucking unbelievable-”

“Snacks!”

Thank fuck, there was a bodega open with a friendly Turkish grandpa manning the counter. Eddie nodded to him as Richie raided the freestanding fridge in the back for a damn double-handful of sodas. Eddie grabbed a six-pack of bottled water and set it on the counter while Richie grabbed half the stock from the shelves: salt and vinegar potato chips, chocolate bars, bags of popcorn. Eddie plucked a couple of assorted nut bars from the front of the counter and added it to their stack for himself. That would tide him over until morning (as if he didn’t have a half-dozen of those tucked into his bag back in the hotel. He might not have _steaks_ , but he wasn’t completely _un_ prepared. This wasn’t his first international trip).

The sweet grandpa behind the counter didn’t even blink, ringing up their purchases one-by-one. At the end he pointed at the cigarettes behind the counter (likely the real reason there was a bodega open at midnight) and raised his eyebrows. Eddie saw Richie sigh wistfully, but to Eddie’s great pride he shook his head for the both of them.

Even loaded down with their purchases, Richie somehow managed to finish two Cokes and one full-sized bag (or what counted for full-sized in Budapest) of salt and vinegar chips in the last block to their hotel. Richie dumped the trash into a can inside the hotel lobby as they made their way up the three flights of stairs (ugh) to their room.

“Next time we should rent an apartment,” Richie announced as they finally collapsed into their room. They kicked off their shoes at the door and immediately started tossing snacks on the bed even as they both stripped down to their underwear.

“If we rent an apartment there’s no room service,” Eddie pointed out.

Richie snorted and grabbed at what passed for a hotel menu in the ostensibly _nice_ hotel they were at. He waved the menu at Eddie. “There’s no room service here! Look: kitchen closes at eleven. What the fuck! That’s when the bars close!”

“The bars don’t close at eleven here, that’s London,” Eddie reminded him.

“Ugh, why did I ever complain about that, send me back to the land of fried fish and meat pies,” Richie whined. Throwing himself on the bed, he cracked open another soda—something orange this time—and rifled through his snack loot until he picked out a foreign-labeled Kit-Kat bar. Eddie peeled open his almond protein bar and sipped at his water, trying not to broadcast his jealousy.

Without even looking, Richie broke off two of his Kit-Kats and passed them over.

Eddie would marry him again, a hundred times. Just say the word.

“Fuck, the fucking beds aren’t even big enough,” Richie whined, kicking his legs over the edge of the bed.

“That’s because your head is halfway down the mattress,” Eddie pointed out. Richie flipped him off and slowly started scooting himself back up the mattress until his head was on the pillow. He then straightened himself out—it’s not like he ever did that while standing, the gangly idiot, but _now_ he did it, just to win an argument—and slung his ankles over the end of the mattress They stared at each other, Richie thinking he was proving some sort of brilliant point, Eddie utterly unamused.

“The mattress is not too short. It’s six and a half feet. You’re not seven feet tall.”

“No, but I _am_ six-four, so unless I-”

“You are _not_ six-four, you’re a fucking liar-”

“-drill my head against the headboard—hey, Eddie, maybe you can help with that-”

“-first thing you’ve said that makes sense all night-”

“-then I’m going to- wait. Really?”

They were already stripped down to shirts and underwear but Eddie reached up and yanked his shirt off by the back of the neck, then shoved his underwear down. He laid back on the pillows, hands behind his head.

“The bed’s large enough for _me_ to be comfortable lying down,” Eddie pointed out. “So I guess you’ll have to do all the work. For once.”

Richie was staring wide-eyed at him. Frantically he shoved the bags of food off the bed, hands shaking a little as they ran over Eddie’s chest, his thighs. Eddie shivered and arched up into the touch, staring at Richie with hungry eyes. Eddie loved how overwhelmed Richie always seemed by him. Twenty years later, and Richie still seemed like he thought he was _lucky_ to get to have sex with Eddie. It was flattering, to think of it in its most basic terms. Terrifying, when you really sat with the implications of it all. And an honor, ultimately: a responsibility, that on his best days Eddie thought maybe, maybe, he could bear.

“All the, yup, all the work,” Richie agreed, fumbling his shirt and underwear off less gracefully than Eddie had. He leaned down, pressing soft kisses to Eddie’s chest, sucking at his nipples, biting at his thighs.

Afterwards, Eddie dozed lightly, facing Richie because Richie was on the side of the bed closer to the door. Richie was sprawled out, too sweaty to fall asleep but he was going to fall asleep that way because Richie was gross and Eddie was too tired to make him get up and take a shower. Eddie really should have taken a shower, too, but Richie had sucked the last of the energy Eddie had for the day with his asshole, so, Eddie was done.

Richie’s legs shifted against the mattress. “I really do need a longer mattress than this.”

“Good thing we have a California king,” Eddie mumbled, eyes closed.

* * *

Richie was panting worryingly hard halfway up the trail. It wasn’t even that steep: it was a slightly uphill grade. Eddie glanced over at him, wondering if he should mention it. Richie’s face was _beat_ red, glasses slipping down over a frankly disgusting amount of sweat dripping down his face. Eddie passed over his Yeti stainless steel rambler. Richie pulled to a stop, panting as he unscrewed the top and drank from it in long, gasping swallows.

“Fucking shit, Richie,” Eddie muttered as he took the half-empty rambler back from him. “You have to eat a vegetable once in a while. Go for a jog.” Or even a fucking walk, at this rate.

“I’m fine,” Richie wheezed, putting his hands on his hips and wincing dramatically. “It’s just-” he waved vaguely. Up ahead of them, not even a hundred yards further down the trail, were the Uris’. They were dressed in nearly matching outfits, looking like they’d stepped out of an LL Bean catalogue: Timberline boots, khaki shorts, button down short-sleeve shirts. They were ready for their European backpacking adventure.

Personally, Eddie was wondering when the fuck they were going to wrap this up and get back somewhere with AC, but he wasn’t feeling the heat nearly as bad as Richie clearly was.

“You know we’ve only walked like a quarter mile,” Eddie pointed out. He glanced over Richie’s shoulder. “I can see the highway from here.”

“Fuck your stairmaster,” Richie wheezed.

Eddie shrugged. “Come on. It’s not even a mile hike from the highway. We’re probably halfway there.”

A group of Japanese tourists bounded past Richie and Eddie in a tight formation, the octogenarians in the group hustling up the trail without breaking a sweat. Richie watched them in disbelief.

“It’s the last thing they want to see today,” Eddie reminded him. “And then we can get back on the train.”

“I like the train,” Richie acknowledged. “Snacks. Trolleys! Full service. Wi-Fi!”

The trains were okay. Eddie wasn’t a big fan of public transportation on _principle_ , but he supposed most the trains around here were… good enough (not the subways, though: the subways were exactly what you’d expect. They were fucking subways).

“Come on, old man,” Eddie told him. He reached out for Richie’s hand, taking it and thumbing over his knuckles. Richie’s manic exhaustion evened out a little bit, and he pressed pause on the dramatics long enough to smile down at Eddie.

“Alright,” Richie sighed dramatically. “Where did the fucking Uris’ go?”

A few minutes of relatively silent hiking and suddenly Richie was grabbing Eddie’s arm, shaking it viciously.

“Eddie! Eds! Am I hallucinating? Is this a Bug’s Bunny Cartoon? Does that shit happen in real life, where you see an oasis in the middle of the desert right before the vultures come and get you?”

“What, what?” Eddie whined, yanking his arm out from Richie’s grasp. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Margaritas!”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Richie, what the fu-” Then he stopped. If he was a cartoon character he would have rubbed his eyes with both fists.

There was a… bar. A margarita bar. In the middle of the forest trail?

“What the _fuck_?”

Richie was bounding towards the bar like he was Snow White with a serious hormone imbalance. Eddie stared after him in confusion for way too long before he realized Richie really _was_ sprinting for a bar in the middle of the forest, and their friends, the lovely Uris’, were _not_.

“Richie!” Eddie shouted. “Richie, you asshole!”

By the time Eddie caught him—so _now_ Richie was athletic enough to outrun Eddie for a hundred yards, uphill? Fucking suspicious—Richie was at the bar, panting and reading the chalkboard menu on the wall even as he wiped his face off with his shirt.

“They’ve got _frozen margaritas_ ,” Richie explained as Eddie pulled up next to him.

Fuck, that _did_ sound good. And it’d be a rare chance to get an iced drink, since all of Europe apparently had cold-sensitive teeth or something, judging by their utter disdain for ice in their drinks.

“What the fuck is this?” Eddie wondered, staring at the building. “ _Why_ is this _here_?”

They weren’t on a road. They were on a fucking trail, off the side of the highway—like, in the middle of two exits on the highway, there was a small pull-off for a bus stop, and that’s where the trail started, just straight off that—and heading for an ancient Roman aqueduct. Tarragona was another five miles back _thataway_ , and there was nothing else _thisaway_ besides generic outskirts.

And, apparently: a margarita bar.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Eddie whispered, with feeling.

“¿Qué quieres?”

A bartender appeared: handsome young man, like apparently everybody in this country. If Eddie hadn’t locked Richie down via the Stockholm Syndrome that was their lives, he might feel jealous. He glanced over at Richie, full expecting him to be looking this guy up and down. But Richie was clutching the edge of the bar, staring lovingly at… the blender behind the bartender.

Right. Because Richie _loved_ Eddie and had for decades. Eddie somehow just… found it hard to believe, sometimes. That after everything…

Eddie shook himself. “Stan and Patty are going to kill us,” he pointed out.

“ _Eddie_ …”

“We can’t,” Eddie sighed. Richie turned to him, aghast. That fucking puppy dog face. It shouldn’t work— _Eddie_ was the one with the big puppy dog eyes. Richie’s were too damn light for that. But he tried it anyway, and sometimes the damn jerk was successful, because whatever Richie wanted, Eddie usually kind of wanted too.

“Look, we can’t drink and then hike the rest of the way up to the aqueduct,” Eddie pointed out. “That thing is like two hundred meters high: we’ll stumble off and fucking die.”

“I’m not going to get rip-roaring drunk from a single frozen marg,” Richie pointed out with a snort.

Eddie hated when Richie made him be the grown-up. Well, that wasn’t true: Eddie loved being the grown-up. He loved being the one with the plan, and being in control. So much of his fucking life had been out of his control, had been spent not even in control of _himself_. But Eddie hated having to be the grown-up when he wanted to run away with Richie and give in to his stupid schemes. After all, Eddie was the kid that followed Richie around like a puppy, letting him get him into all sorts of crazy trouble, including getting his arm broke in an abandoned house and killing a fucking clown in a fucking sewer. Eddie was the twenty-year-old who had followed Richie back to a town he’d all-but-forgotten, was the forty-year-old who’d followed Richie into the sewers once again to kill that _fucking_ clown. Eddie loved letting Richie get him into trouble.

“We’re coming back down this way,” Eddie pointed out. Richie’s face lit up again. That made Eddie feel a little better.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously, are we coming back down this way? Yes, fucking seriously, that’s where the fucking bus stop is-”

“You’re such a ridiculous little man I fucking love you.”

“Uh-”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Eddie asked.

“Okay!” Richie reached out and grabbed Eddie’s hand. “Let’s get up this fucking mountain and look at some rocks or whatever! Uh… _un momento,_ uh, _señor_. Uh… We’ll be back!”

The bartender smiled tightly at them. “Yes, sir. We are open until eight.”

Of course he fucking spoke English. Everyone spoke English. Eddie let Richie drag him up the mountain— _hill_ , it was hardly a mountain. It was a fucking nature trail with an uphill grade.

Five minutes later Richie was panting again, leaning on trees as they neared the top and the path grew steeper.

“Come on, Richie!” Patty called down. They were standing up in a clearing, presumably the entrance for the aqueduct. Eddie envied them. And also resented them. What was so fucking great about some old rocks, again? They could be back at their hotel, showering before going out to the nice little paella place a block away, with the mixed drinks that were so sweet you woke up with a hangover guaranteed.

“Fuck you, Uris!” Richie called up after her. “Not you, Patty,” he clarified after a moment. “You’re a doll. Fuck your husband.”

“She does that plenty,” Stan said dryly.

“Kinky,” Richie panted. He sounded genuinely admiring, exhaustion stripping the sarcasm from his voice.

In solidarity Eddie hollered up at the Uris’: “Why exactly did you two insist we do this again?”

“Because it’s fun!” Patty called down.

“Because it’s over two thousand years old,” Stan added.

“We can walk on it!” Patty said.

“So we’re climbing up a hill,” Eddie ticked off, “Five miles outside of town. Where there’s nothing else to see. To go look at some ruins.”

“You said it sounded fun!” Patty reminded him.

Eddie rolled his eyes. He was just being _polite_. And that had been _before_ this ridiculous day, with the shoving lines and the overcrowded train and these Spaniards had _no_ idea how to queue, and the museums which were only open a half day on weekends, apparently? And all of this after a ninety-minute train ride outside of Barcelona, where they were staying, _just_ to look at some ruins. He really didn’t understand it.

They finally reached the clearing where the Uris’ were. And then they walked out into the middle of the aqueduct together.

And then maybe Eddie understood it, a little.

“Wow,” Richie breathed. They stared out at the miles and miles of rolling hills all laid out below them. Tarragona was visible clearly in the distance, the highway they’d ridden in on curling out through the trees. The aqueduct’s sides were high, up to their waists—well, Eddie’s waist, more like the bottom of Richie’s ass—and Eddie felt shockingly secure standing two hundred meters up on a stone structure that’d been around since Jesus Christ Himself walked the earth.

“Don’t fucking climb on the sides, Richie, please,” Eddie told him preemptively. He grabbed Richie’s hand and squeezed, his sign for _I mean it, I really mean it, please_.

“Nah, dude. This is enough.” Richie turned in a slow circle, breeze tangling his hair as he took it all in. “This is… man. This is pretty fucking worth it.” He looked down at the mud beneath their feet, stomping a little back and forth. “It’s hard to believe people built this. Two thousand years ago! Without like, cranes and shit! Man. How the fuck did they _do_ it?”

“We’ll have to ask Ben,” Eddie mused. He walked forward, trailing his hands over the flat top of the sides. Incredible. How was it held together? Concrete? Did that exist back in Roman times? It couldn’t just be clay and spit, right? “He’d know.”

Patty and Stan jogged back over to them from where they’d walked the full length of the aqueduct and circled back. “Do you guys want us to take your picture?”

“Shit yeah,” Richie declared. “Christmas card photo time.”

“We look like shit,” Eddie reminded him.

“We’re on a fucking two-thousand-year-old aqueduct!” Richie pointed out. “Who cares!”

So Eddie obligingly smiled for the camera, even when Richie wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pressed an exuberant kiss to his hair. And maybe, okay: maybe it _would_ make a great Christmas card picture. Or at least a great Facebook profile pic.

“Okay, Uris’. Are we fucking _done_ walking through ruins to look at ruins on top of other ruins, _finally_?”

“This was the last thing today…” Stan started to say. But Richie cut him off.

“Yes! Eddie! You know what that means!”

Eddie ducked his head to hide his smirk.

“Margaritas!”

* * *

Ben and Bev were having a fabulous destination wedding in Iceland. Neither Richie nor Eddie had ever been, so it should have been great. A really interesting trip. Something that Eddie would get excited planning, and scheduling, and researching, and Richie would enjoy absorbing all the local color and drinking and eating his way through the country.

So it was weird that, a week before the trip, Eddie found himself showering off after his Sunday morning jog and… just _not_ wanting to sit down with his laptop, researching some country he really didn’t give two shits about.

Instead, Eddie grabbed the newspaper (he still insisted they get delivered on Sundays at least, just _because_ ) and carried it out to the ridiculous swing chair Richie had installed last summer on their porch. It got more use than any other chair in their house, though, so maybe Richie had been right about something (for once. Heh). Eddie flipped straight to the crossword and was still curled up there an hour later when Richie stumbled his way through their screen door, two mugs of coffee in hand.

“Morning, love,” he mumbled. He pressed a kiss to Eddie’s head, and Eddie obligingly shifted over so Richie could squeeze in next to him on the swing. The chains rattled a little, and the bench swayed some, but after a moment it settled and Richie and Eddie were swinging lightly together as they sipped at their coffees.

After a minute Eddie sighed and shifted some more, pulling his legs forward so he was sitting upright, only to lean himself against Richie’s shoulder. Richie was leaning back against the swing with his eyes closed, but he lifted his left arm and wrapped it around Eddie’s shoulders without looking.

“I don’t suppose _you_ want to research what must-see things we need to do in Iceland?” Eddie asked after a minute.

“Not going well?” Richie asked.

“Not going at all,” Eddie admitted. He sighed again and absently played with the hem of Richie’s nightshirt. It was from one of his old tours. “I just don’t feel like it.”

“Well then don’t,” Richie suggested. “We can just wing it, for once. We might have more fun, that way.”

“I won’t,” Eddie insisted.

“You don’t have a lot of fun the way you normally do it,” Richie pointed out.

Eddie groaned. “It’s just… _traveling_.”

Richie snorted. “Yeah. You don’t have to tell me. Back from tour two weeks and now this.”

A thought skittered across Eddie’s mind. An inkling. A suspicion. He leaned back from Richie, disentangling themselves enough that it got Richie’s attention. He blinked muzzily at Eddie, not so long from sleep that he didn’t still look scruffy and soft-focus. If he hadn’t had a hypothesis to test out, Eddie might have leaned forward and kissed him, or better yet, dragged him back into bed for a late-morning Sunday cuddle (and who knows what else). But he had a theory. An insight. A… Hmm.

“When we went to Florida, with Mike,” Eddie said. Richie snorted and didn’t even let him finish.

“You mean the glorious sunburn and sand-in-my-asscrack vacation of twenty-seventeen? What about it?”

“And England,” Eddie continued, because Richie hadn’t realized it, but he’d already answered his question about Florida. “I had heartburn for three weeks after. Everything was fried and full of sodium.”

“And no free drink refills,” Richie pointed out. “And the bars closed at eleven!”

“And Budapest?”

Richie rolled his eyes. “You mean Lilliput? Where I don’t fit anywhere and all the portions are in miniature?”

“I felt a decade older trying to fit into the nightlife there,” Eddie agreed, picking up steam. “And the hotels were so fucking Soviet-bloc.”

“And small. Please don’t forget me, and how I was twice the size of everything in that country.”

“Richie,” Eddie said, reaching forward to grab his hand. Richie tilted his head curiously, smile kissing the corners of his mouth. “Do we hate traveling?”

Richie opened his mouth, then closed it. He started to laugh, eyes staring up to the sky as he thought.

“Uh…”

“What was your favorite part of Florida?”

“Well, we hung out with Mike. Outside of Derry, even!”

“Besides our friends.”

Richie giggled. “We managed to fuck the bed across the tile floor. Remember that? Fucking _tile_ hotel room floors?”

“The morning we stayed in bed until eleven in England,” Eddie raced on. “And then we got room service that cost like, two hundred bucks-”

“Pounds,” Richie pointed out. “That’s like… three hundred, American!”

“What about Budapest?”

Richie thought for a minute. “The hotel fucking sucked. The hotel in Barcelona was pretty nice, though.”

“Richie.” Eddie shook his hand. “I… I think we might hate traveling?”

“…I think that’s a hate crime, Eds.”

“Shut the fuck up, I’m having a fucking revelation, here,” Eddie snapped. “What… What if we just… Stop forcing ourselves to travel the world together?”

Richie fell uncharacteristically silent for a long second.

“We were stuck in Derry so long,” Richie slowly thought out loud. “That was the only place we could be together. We spent forty years seeing the world without each other. Seems like… we should want to see it together, now.”

“But do you actually _want_ to see the world,” Eddie prompted, “Or do you just want to be with me?”

“Of course I want to be with you, Eds-”

“And you want to know you’re free to go wherever you want. With me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, Eddie. That’s the… that’s the meat of it, I guess.”

“What if… even if we didn’t go anywhere? We just knew we _could_? And we were _together_?”

Richie’s fingers drummed against Eddie’s shoulder as he thought. It was an annoying habit of his which Eddie figured he should hate and he absolutely loved. Fucking awful.

“I… It’s not… _Not_ true…”

“Do you know how much cool shit there is to do in Iceland?” Eddie asked him. “But do you even _care_?”

“I want to see Bev and Ben,” Richie replied immediately. “And everyone else. I want to see them _with you_. I want us to all be together, dancing the hurkie chicken together and having no fucking rhythm, even _Mike_ , which, c’mon, man-”

“Racist.”

“Shh don’t tell him,” Richie teased.

“But what about _Iceland_?” Eddie pressed.

Finally Richie shrugged. “Yeah, I… It could be anywhere. I don’t get a fuck that it’s Iceland. They could get married in Stan’s back yard and it’d be just as good. Maybe… Maybe even better?”

“Iceland has volcanoes,” Eddie pointed out.

“There’s just mountains if they’re not exploding,” Richie shot back. “And if they _are_ exploding you can’t exactly visit them.

“Glaciers.”

“I mean, it’s fucking ice? Who cares?”

“The northern lights.”

“Yeah but you gotta like, travel out to bumfuck nowhere, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the winter, just to get a _chance_ to see them? I could just look at them online and get a better view of them.”

“Lots of nature trails.”

“Oh yeah that’s my fucking jam I’m so horny for nature trails.”

“Castles.”

“Seen one, seen them all.”

“Frozen waterfalls.”

“We talking about fucking ice again?” Richie snickered.

“Whale watching.”

“See: aurora borealis complaints. Give me Planet Earth and a bucket of popcorn.”

“Puffins.”

Richie hesitated on that one, sucking at his teeth. Finally he sighed and shook his head. “We could just go to the zoo. Actually… You wanna go to the Atlanta zoo? When we get back, I guess, fuck. I really hate traveling, Eddie. I’m sorry.”

“Richie: I think we both hate traveling.”

Richie scrunched up his face. “But I mean, Eddie. There’s shit we should go see, right. Like… the Pyramids? Or… The Great Wall of China. Tokyo?”

“Richie.” Eddie turned sideways, holding Richie’s hands in his. “I think: we just like fucking in hotel rooms.”

They fell silent for a long moment. Richie’s mouth slowly dropped open as the revelation hit him. Birds chirped all around them on this gorgeous morning in Georgia. Finally Richie looked into Eddie’s eyes.

“You’re the smartest person I know.”

“Fucking ridiculous, we’re like the bottom two Losers in the brains department.”

“Shit, you’re right.”

“Richie?”

Richie scooped Eddie up in his arms, pulling him close. The porch swing chains rattled as it adjusted to their movements.

“Eddie,” Richie cooed. “My love. I swear to you, from this day forward, that I will never make you go _do_ a bunch of things when we’re traveling. We’ll stay in the most expensive rooms in international chain hotels. We’ll order room service. We’ll fuck until the headboard drills a hole in the wall. And I swear to you, my husband, my life: I will never make you walk around in nature just to see something we could just look at on the internet.”

Eddie grabbed Richie’s cheeks in his hands, squeezing them together comically hard so Richie’s lips pursed like a fish.

“That’s the most romantic shit you’ve ever said to me. That should be our fucking wedding vows.”

“Wait, so you _will_ do a-”

Swiftly Eddie cut him off with a kiss, swallowing Richie’s habitual plea to do a new wedding, a “real” one, with all their friends there (they’d already signed a marriage license years ago, when they’d first bought this house together. For tax reasons, of course. And medical liability and health insurance and inheritance, shit like that). Eddie didn’t want Richie to find out that he and Stan had been debating exactly how he would ask Richie to marry him again. After all, he had already pretty much knocked it out of the park on wedding proposal number one, and he was looking to go two for two.

“What city are you going to for your spring tour?”

Richie groaned, but he looked up as he thought about it.

“West coast leg, sorry babe. Cali, Cali, Washington, Oregon, Vegas?”

“Nice hotels in Vegas,” Eddie pointed out. But Richie shook his head.

“I think I’m only there a day. It’s not worth you flying out, the time change…”

Eddie hummed thoughtfully, rubbing one hand down Richie’s sleep shirt. He still smelled like their bed: warm, musky, a little bit like dried sweat. A little bit like the sex they’d had last night. Eddie wasn’t normally a fan of morning sex but it was hardly morning anymore: not for _him_ , anyway… “Could you add another day? Make it worth the trip?”

“I’d have to check when the other cities are…” Richie protested, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Eddie’s lips. Eddie grinned. It was as good as done.

Eddie leaned over and kissed Richie again, smiling into it as Richie went all loose and open beneath him, tongue licking sloppily against Eddie’s. Eddie pulled back.

“Let’s go have sex,” he suggested.

Richie was up in a flash, grabbing at Eddie’s hand and tugging him back in their home.

* * *

“Want me to fuck you against the window?” Richie licked the question into Eddie’s mouth.

“Ungh, fuck, that’s so gross,” Eddie moaned. He ground his dick into Richie’s thigh, which Richie helpfully had shoved between his legs. Richie fucked his hips against Eddie, making the door behind him judder with the force of it. Eddie moaned again, pinned to the hotel room door with Richie’s _bulk_ , complete trapped, completely enveloped. Fuck, it was addicting. Eddie fisted the hair at the nape of Richie’s neck as he shoved his tongue against Richie’s, the two of them drooling into each other’s mouths.

“You want to fuck me?” Eddie asked, just to double check.

“ _Unf_ , kinda?” Richie groaned. He dipped his head to lick a stripe up Eddie’s neck, chewing at his jaw. Eddie shuddered beneath his teeth. Fuck, they weren’t sixteen, he had fucking _work_ on Monday- Richie ran his bottom teeth in a long line back to front up Eddie’s jawbone, and Eddie’s dick leaked in his pants. Okay, fuck, who the fuck cared, _fuck_ , Eddie grabbed Richie’s bicep and held on for dear life, please fucking just do _that_ again.

And then, contrary to every psychic thought Eddie thought he was transmitting loud and clear, Richie pulled back. His hips were still grinding lazily against Eddie but he seemed to be trying to bring himself under control.

“If you want? Can you?”

Eddie did a quick internal check. What did he eat today? When was the last time he… _ahem_. He nodded up at Richie.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Yeah, I’m good. We can- You can.”

“Fuck, yes, sorry, I just-”

Eddie laughed as Richie pulled him off the door, kissing each other as they stumbled further into the hotel room.

“Don’t fucking say _sorry_ , what the fuck-”

“Yeah I just, you know, I’m all jazzed up from the show-”

“Don’t know why; it was a stupid fucking show.”

“Fuck I love it when you demean me you sexy fucking badger. Call me a whore.”

“Shut up.” Eddie grinned into Richie’s mouth. He was quickly stripping down, removing his jacket, his shirt, unbuckling his belt. Richie was in his goofy little stage suit, soaked through of fucking course because the guy sweated about three gallons of fluids every time he performed.

Richie groaned and grabbed Eddie’s ass, rolling their hips together tightly. “Oh yes baby, _more_.” Eddie knew it was a joke, but his _dick_ didn’t know that: his dick just knew it was rubbing up against Richie’s dick, and as far as Eddie’s dick was concerned that was exactly the right stuff. Eddie shoved Richie’s jacket off his stupidly broad shoulders and grabbed his neck, pulling him closer as he tried his best to stick his tongue down Richie’s throat. Richie’s hands got waylaid in his effort to get undressed and found themselves cupping Eddie’s face in their palms, drawing him closer, tugging him up to meet Richie’s mouth.

They stumbled backwards and Richie nearly tripped over his pants, which he’d managed to unbuckle and unbutton but hadn’t shoved them down or stepped out of them yet. Eddie laughed into Richie’s mouth as Richie frantically kicked his legs, shaking the pants off. Underwear, shirts… Richie started to go and tear at his buttons before Eddie shushed him, pushed his hands away so he could quickly undo the buttons without any lasting damage.

“Hey, hey, I’ve got it,” Eddie told him. Richie sucked at his throat.

“I thought I was supposed to be saying that to you.”

 _We can say it to each other_ , Eddie thought, but didn’t say. Leave the sappiest of thoughts to Richie to voice out loud. Finally they were naked, and Richie was dipping just for a second to grab the lube from the nightstand. Then he dipped back because Eddie hit him and shot him a _look_ , and Richie sighed and grabbed for a condom, too.

“Just let it drip out of you,” Richie muttered, but he was laughing softly as he nipped at Eddie’s jaw.

“Fucking disgusting,” Eddie grumbled, tugging his jaw away so he could meet Richie’s lips in a kiss.

They weren’t headed for the bed, and Eddie knew it. Richie had been joking-but-not earlier, and Eddie… Hmm. It was a _thought_ , that was for sure. And if neither of them mentioned it, Eddie could claim plausible deniability. Like he was sex-drunk and he was just _going_ with it.

“So it’s disgusting when my come is dripping out of your ass but not disgusting when it’s your come in mine?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Eddie agreed. Richie beamed down at him.

“You’re such a fucking dick.”

“I love you too, asshole,” Eddie proclaimed back.

Richie swallowed Eddie’s mouth up with his own, then, and shoved them further past the bed. When Eddie’s ass met glass he shivered, a thrill of fear going through him.

“Turn around,” Richie muttered. “Let me get you ready.”

“Fuck, I don’t-” If he didn’t _look_ , he could deny that he realized what they were doing. But if he _looked_ , then he’d _see_ , and-

Richie nuzzled at his jaw, at his hairline, at his ear, at his throat. His big hands stroked down Eddie’s body, over his ribs, his flanks, massaged at his ass. Eddie’s dick jerked, another burst of precome leaking from the tip. Fuck, Richie’s _hands_.

Against his better judgement, his instincts, against the trembling in his knees, Eddie let Richie turn him gently around until he was pressed face-first against the hotel window. They were in the penthouse (thank you, Steve, for making sure to book Richie the _good_ room when Eddie would be visiting him on tour). The city glimmered out before them, lights shining, people bustling around even at this late hour. Eddie trembled as Richie’s fingers slipped down between his legs, pressed gently against him.

“Come on,” Eddie grumbled, suddenly feeling soft and overwhelmed. “I thought you wanted to fuck me.”

“I am,” Richie whispered against his hair. He pressed soft kisses to the back of Eddie’s neck, his shoulders. “I’m just taking a moment.”

“Well the more moments you take the more likely some pap is going to get a shot of my dick.”

“Lucky pap.” But Richie did press his fingers inside Eddie then, getting him nice and wet. Eddie’s hands clenched into fists on the window, and he braced himself on his forearms as he pressed back into Richie’s hand.

“Fuck, your ass-” Richie muttered. Eddie could see his reflection in the window, Richie’s head tilted down as he watched his fingers fuck in and out of him. Eddie trembled, dick twitching.

“Okay, come on,” Eddie told him. “That’s good.”

“I’m enjoying myself, here,” Richie pointed out. But he was scrambling with the condom wrapper, rolling it onto his dick. Eddie braced himself against the window and breathed hard, waiting for that perfect, too-full breach.

But Richie was manhandling him, turning Eddie around, grabbing him by his waist, his ass. Eddie raised his eyebrows as Richie squatted down and their eyes met.

“You’re going to throw out your back,” Eddie warned him.

“With you? No way. I’ve eaten breakfasts that weigh more than you.”

“Muscle weighs more than fat-”

“Good thing I’m all muscle, baby.”

“Fucking assho- fuck!”

Eddie swore as Richie lifted him, settling Eddie onto his hips. He breathed out slowly, looking Eddie in the eye—they were at level, like this. Eddie trembled, held up just by Richie’s arms and back and thighs. Richie’s face was completely relaxed as he gazed at Eddie, watching his features for the slightest tell. It really was like Eddie weighed nothing for him. Eddie held onto his shoulders, hands running over his heated skin, feeling the tight bunch of muscles beneath.

“Okay?”

Eddie wrapped his legs fast around Richie, locking his heels over the small of his back. He nodded, chest heaving in time with Richie’s.

“Okay.”

“I’m just going to…” Gently Richie leaned Eddie against the glass, shuffling his feet forward just a bit as the window helped take some of Eddie’s weight off his arms.

Eddie bit his lip and reached under himself, fingers fumbling as they clasped over Richie’s dick. Carefully he guided it up, finding his own hole after a moment. Their eyes locked as Eddie centered the head on his own hole. Slowly Richie let Eddie sink down inch after inch, the head of Richie’s dick pressing, then popping inside Eddie’s hole. Eddie groaned as Richie’s hips jerked up, fucking the thick, hot shaft of his dick in.

Eddie leaned forward and kissed Richie, couldn’t stop kissing him, as they slowly figured out their rhythm together. Or, as Richie slowly figured out _his_ rhythm, because there wasn’t much Eddie could do to help. In fact, Eddie was pretty much at Richie’s mercy right now. How fast they went, how slow, how hard… Eddie’s heart slammed in his chest as Richie shifted back, then fucked back up into him.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Eddie whispered, with feeling. He wrapped his arms around Richie’s neck. “You got this?”

“I got it,” Richie promised. He shifted again, then again. Eddie groaned and pressed their foreheads together. “I got you,” Richie whispered.

They kissed, Richie’s hips moving faster, harder, as he started to fuck Eddie in earnest. Soon Eddie was bouncing on Richie’s hips, glass cold against his back, Richie’ blazing hot all around him, inside of him.

“This must look so fucking hot,” Richie swore, kissing at Eddie’s neck. “Fuck, can you imagine the show we’re putting on?”

“We’re going to end up in the tabloids tomorrow,” Eddie grumbled. “Hopefully they only got out the good lenses once my back was turned.”

“They’ll still know it’s you,” Richie pointed out.

“I don’t think my ass is that recognizable.”

Richie giggled, groping at Eddie’s ass as if to say _Yes it is. It is to me_.

“I mean because we’re married,” Richie reminded him. “I _hope_ the press assumes that it’s my _husband_ I’m fucking against my hotel room window.”

“Well you could actually _do_ it,” Eddie mumbled, even as he tilted his head back and his eyes fluttered closed, sensation of Richie inside of him overwhelming him.

“You’re going to regret that, Kaspbrak.”

“Dare you, Tozier.”

Richie was _unrelenting_ after that. He fucked Eddie hard, pounding, strong stomach and tree-trunk thighs brutalizing Eddie’s poor asshole with his dick. Eddie moaned loud, because he fucking loved it, and because Richie loved to hear him. When he felt Richie’s thighs start to tremble, his thrusts growing faster and more erratic, Eddie reached between them and started stroking his poor, neglected dick.

“Come all over me,” Richie murmured. “Yeah, yeah, babe-”

“ _Ung_ , shut up, Richie-”

“Yeah, Eds, come for me.” Richie licked a line up Eddie’s throat, then kissed him again. Eddie melted into the kiss, fist jerking between them as Richie’s hips sped up even more. Too soon, but somehow unexpectedly, Eddie’s orgasm crested inside of him, spilling over as he gasped into Richie’s mouth. He clenched hard around Richie, knowing he was close. A second later Richie was grunting, hips thrusting too fast and then stopping, _grinding_ up into him. Eddie felt the _flex_ of Richie’s dick as he poured himself out into the condom, and that carried Eddie through the last of his orgasm, dick twitching weakly as a few more dribbles of come spurted from the tip.

“Don’t drop me,” Eddie warned.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” Richie whispered into his hair. Carefully Richie adjusted his footing, then tugged Eddie away from the window, settling his full weight back onto Richie’s hips. He walked the few steps over to their California King-sized penthouse bed. Helpfully Eddie reached below himself and held onto the base of the condom for Richie as he lifted Eddie off of his dick. He let Eddie drop to the mattress, then dropped down right alongside him.

“Ugh, get rid of the condom,” Eddie told him.

“Ugh, shut up, it’ll just leak all over me,” Richie whined. “I kept your precious asshole come-free: don’t tell me what to do with it now.”

“Yeah but I want to cuddle with you, asshole,” Eddie shot back. “And I’m not going to do that if you’ve got cold jizz all over your pubes.”

Richie groaned _dramatically_ , then kept groaning as he headed off to the bathroom to remove the condom and wash his dick off. He groaned the entire way back, too, loud and ridiculous and Eddie knew he was mentally workshopping a bit about this, judging by the way he was walking all bow-legged and dramatic, arms held down at his sides pathetically. Richie threw himself onto the bed face-first, still groaning the whole time.

Taking pity on him (but really, not in the slightest) Eddie rolled over and pulled Richie against his chest. Richie went happily, groans finally subsiding as he let himself be spooned by Eddie.

“Show was better tonight,” Eddie admitted. “Better than it was last year.”

“Yeah,” Richie agreed. “The more I talk about, like, about you, about me, the better it feels. More natural. And the more the material comes to me. Easier.”

Eddie wanted to say something like _I knew it would_ , or _Of course it does_. But he didn’t want to undermine how _hard_ this had been for Richie, the past few years. Rebuilding his entire brand, rebuilding his entire _career_. Relearning how to write comedy, how to write _stand-up_ —which apparently was a whole specific, incredibly difficult skill-set—and all with the added element of proclaiming every night _I’m gay, I’m gay, I love a man and I’m gay_. Even when his sets weren’t about that, even when he didn’t mention Eddie of sucking dick or anything like that at all, he was still performing his _own_ material, going out there not as Trashmouth but as _Richie Tozier_. Eddie knew, just as much as the gay thing, all wrapped up together with it, that meant Richie was allowing himself, _forcing_ himself to be _seen_ every night. And that was going against a lifetime of learned behavior.

Just like even though Eddie had gone ninety-five days without using his inhaler, it still sat in his suitcase, just in _case_. And even if that reset tomorrow, even if he had to use it because he was saying goodbye to Richie and getting on a plane and he felt like _am I forgetting will I remember him do I remember what his face looks like what color are his eyes how big are his hands do I remember him do I-_ that was still okay. That was still _huge_. It wasn’t about staying one hundred percent clean, like his therapist said. It was about making steps. Unlearning a lifetime of trauma took time.

“Hey,” Richie said.

“Hm?” Eddie had been drifting off. He pressed a kiss to Richie’s neck in apology.

“Stay another night.”

“I have work,” Eddie pointed out.

Richie didn’t say anything, but he wiggled his ass back against Eddie’s hips. Eddie sighed.

“What’s the next city?”

“Reno.”

“Man, fuck you.”

“They have nice hotels in Reno,” Richie promised. “I’ll call Steve in the morning. He’ll get us a penthouse suite.”

Eddie stayed silent for a moment, not because he was thinking, but because he didn’t want Richie to know how easily he had won.

“Alright. But I’m leaving Wednesday, okay? I have to work _some_ days this week. And the room better be like, fucking honeymoon nice. I’m not following your ass around on tour to sleep in some shithole with bedbugs.”

Richie rolled over and kissed his thanks into Eddie’s mouth. And Eddie kissed back because even though Richie _knew_ his bitching meant _I love you, I’ll follow you anywhere, now that we can_ , it was good to show it, too.


End file.
